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Originally Posted by numble
What improvements would you make in the example I gave? Add more lights? Take Beijing for instance. With a population of nearly 20 million. The gas tax is extremely high and the roads are very well-maintained. You are only allowed to drive your car 4/5 days per workweek, non-Beijing cars are banned or have to pay a high toll, and you need to enter a lottery just to get the right to buy a car, requiring a waiting period of around 5 years. They have already double-decked the major expressways. The roads are still extremely congested. Congestion pricing probably can solve the congestion problem, getting rid of traffic and increasing the average speeds on the road. How would you spend the congestion pricing revenue, and why? What improvements would you make to the roads if congestion pricing has solved the congestion and average speed problem, and the gas tax and other revenue has already kept the roads well-maintained?
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Beijing has no double deck expressways. You may be thinking of Shanghai, which has many elevated highways in the central city with major surface arterial roads running underneath them.
The lottery you mention is not for the right to buy a car, but rather to buy a license plate. The number of Beijing license plates available per month is heavily restricted, and there is a lottery for the right to bid on available plates. Since the number of plates is so restricted, the price of a plate is extremely high, exceeding the price of a small car.
Beijing's problems are due to the fact that the restrictions that you mention came very late. In Shanghai, which has a larger population than Beijing, the lottery system has been in use for much longer, and as a result Shanghai has half the number of registered cars as Beijing. This means that Shanghai has nowhere near as bad traffic as Beijing, even with fewer highways and far fewer restrictions on out of province cars (the only restriction on non Shanghai plated vehicles is that they cannot use the elevated highways within the Outer Ring Road during peak hours).
Quote:
Originally Posted by numble
How is the issue excessive density? Beijing’s issue probably is the relatively low population density of 1300 people per square km versus New York City’s 7000 people per square mile. Even Los Angeles city is more dense. Increased density is in Beijing’s future. I don’t see where you would build these hypothetical highways, and why you would build them if congestion pricing made the roads uncongested and fast. When do planners decide to build new highways when the existing roads will be consistently free flowing?
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I know you've already conceded on this point, but I should point out that Beijing's density here is based on the area of Beijing Municipality, which is much larger in area than the city of Beijing, and includes a lot of mountainous areas and farmland. The true density of the actual built up areas of Beijing is much, much higher.