Tackling road congestion needn’t be expensive

Caught in traffic? You’re not the only one! No less than 43 percent of Canadians(1) waste an hour or two in traffic each day. This can represent up to 10 days a year in lost family time, not to mention the amount of money wasted and fuel needlessly burned. Nationwide, 11.5-million hours are lost annually as a result of bottlenecks. We need easy and efficient solutions – and they already exist!

CAA National has identified several solutions in a study it conducted in collaboration with a transportation-consulting firm (2). Realistic and inexpensive, these remedies have already yielded encouraging results elsewhere. Here are a few examples.

It’s interesting to learn that vehicle breakdowns and accidents are the primary causes of traffic congestion. In the United Kingdom, incident screens are deployed around crash sites to prevent curious motorists from making traffic worse. It’s a simple solution, and it works.

In Florida, various emergency services work in tandem in order to free up clogged lanes in less than 90 minutes. Each dollar spent in this regard brings in seven. Imagine the gains in time and money! There’s no doubt that road congestion exacts a huge toll on our lives.

Evolved systems exist today that detect traffic patterns and manage traffic lights accordingly. In Toronto, $850,000 has been invested synchronizing lights, and the return on investment is upwards of $64 per dollar spent!

In Paris, traffic lights have been installed on highway on-ramps to regulate the volume of traffic. The results are a 15-percent savings in time, a 10-kilometre-per-hour increase in speed during rush hours, and a 20-percent reduction in accident numbers. This significant solution is also far cheaper than building a new highway.

Ridesharing is another underexploited potential, despite existing technology designed to facilitate the entire process. And from an infrastructure perspective, more thought should be given to roundabouts that enhance safety while also reducing stop-and-start times.

Motorists can also do their part. For example, at the yield sign on a congested road, it’s been shown that it’s better to merge as late as possible and one car at a time, like a zipper. A simple sign at the highway ramp to remind us would do the trick.

Current public-transportation initiatives will continue to improve our mobility, but they should not impede these seemingly modest, inexpensive and efficient solutions. What should we do? Will we move forward? It will be interesting to find out what our politicians think. These are the people who will decide on critical community issues over the coming weeks. Let’s hope that mobility, in its broadest sense, will be part of the discussion – so much the better. We have great expectations... and a duty to ask questions.

1. Source: Canada-wide survey of over two thousand respondents conducted for CAA in the fall of 2016.

2. Congestion Solutions, CPCS, 2018.