Reasons For New York Traffic

By Leslie Ball


New York City is among the biggest and highly populated cities in the world. In this city there are quite a lot of movements from people, trains, motorbikes, bicycles to vehicles. You may seldom see tricycles as well as animals like dogs and cats. Another way of moving of goods is also the cart. All these movements add up to the various causes of New York traffic.

Traffic basically refers to the no number of vehicles peoples or carts or animals that are moving from one direction to another. When these numbers exceed a certain limit, movement is hindered. This means that some vehicles or people may have to stop to allow others to move. When one car stops for example the one behind it must wait for it to start moving so it can also move.

Given that this city has several superhighways one may fail to understand why it still experiences traffic jams. Perhaps the number of vehicles entering the highway largely exceeding those that are getting out of it is a major reason. For this therefore means there are sundry other reasons that cause road jams not just the road size or number of lanes available.

For instance a road accident can happen anywhere on the road. This can cause a jam on the road. This congestion can also cause accidents given the constant braking by the drivers avoiding collisions. When several lanes are closed due to an accident the less available lanes get overcrowded hence causing road jam.

NY City is a continuously developing town. You will therefore find large road constructions going on. This may be to accommodate the increasing number of vehicles. The City can alternatively be building of new roads, expansion of existing ones or repair and maintenance of the existing roads. This works result to road disturbances. Drivers may be diverted to narrow roads or advised on alternative routes to allow for this works.

The city weather conditions are sometimes not favorable. For instance rainfalls, hailstorms or snowfalls may cause the road to be slippery and unclear. The drivers have no choice but to decelerate cautiously. They therefore apply brakes a lot. This therefore means they spend more time on the road. More fuel is used, traveling costs hit the roof. A police giving a traffic offender his ticket are also instances that cause the jams.

Due to the vehicle jam menace the New York City council is faced with the challenge of finding ways of reducing it. The basic tenet being the available road network must be able to support the available vehicle capacity. That is equating supply and demand. Road networks are a very costly, on-going, long term process.

There are several ways that are in use in other cities that can be employed in NY to reduce jams. This methods include, ramp metering whereby cars are allowed to enter roads at timed intervals. This has been showed to increase traffic speeds and lower accidents. The other is allocation of specific lanes to vehicles with high occupancy.




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