Freeway Challenges

For the love of freeways

As useful as they are, freeways have become victims of their own success. Traffic jams during high-demand hours result in inefficient use of fuel and traveler time. Attempts to alleviate congestion often take the form of construction projects to add lanes in high-use areas. These are short-term solutions since it is seldom possible to widen a roadway everywhere at once. In San Diego CA, light-rail lines serve some well-traveled routes, but this is a partial remedy at best since trains, bound to tracks, have limited routing and scheduling flexibility and serve a small percentage of commuters. In Los Angeles CA, the subway system will never serve all outlying population centers.
Roadway maintenance, including the addition of lanes, sign repair and upgrades, changes to access ramps, etc., are supported by a variety of federal, state, and local user fees, property taxes and subsidies. When system costs are not borne by system users, inefficiencies are inevitable. Evidence can be seen in the current hue and cry around the USA for infrastructure-upgrade funding. Thus, one challenge is to create transportation systems which pay for themselves.
Several problems accompany current automobile-based mass-transit in metropolitan areas: congestion; lack of parking places; traffic accidents; and the high cost of automobile ownership. Therefore, we can modernize our mass-transit systems or suffer ever higher transportation costs.
The advent of CAVs has featured an explosion of research and development, deployment of prototypes, and a host of legal and administrative challenges regarding where and when CAVs can  operate on public roadways. As we shall see, Davius willing, this challenge can be turned to advantage for the modernization of mass-transit.

Make no mistake; Davius loves freeways, remarkable feats of engineering that do what they were intended to do. But, Davius is aware that the time has come for improvement. Knowing that his cause is just, keeping the faith in his Commandments, and wielding the mighty sword of System Engineering, we will make it to the promised land.

Davius has cast his vote, but to better understand why, you might want to read the discussion of Other Systems.