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Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by im3w1l on Friday October 10, 2014 @08:44PM (#8440783)
Imagine if you have an IT company with a server. Your server can handle 1000 concurrent users. It is running slowly because a lot of people try to access it.

So you buy another server. Now you have 2000 users, but once again it is starting to run slowly.

You decide to stop there. Clearly, more servers wont help. You'd just get more and more users.

Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by Someone on Saturday October 11, 2014 @09:59AM (#8442154)
You have 1000 users and a server that can easily do the work 20000 users want it to do each day. Yet, every weekday between 08:00 and 9:00, your server is overloaded.

You buy a second server. Now, your server still is overloaded between 08:00 and 9:00 but fewer people use it between 07:00 and 08:00 and 09:00 and 10:00.

There are plenty of people avoiding the main traffic times for whom the annoyance of congestion is just a tiny bit larger than the annoyance of leaving home an hour earlier. Take away a bit of congestion and they move their schedule.

Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by marcus_holmes on Saturday October 11, 2014 @04:49AM (#8441647)
Cities have relatively fixed populations. The problem is not allowing everyone to drive their own car: that's stupid. The problem is how to persuade more people to catch the bus/train. Building roads doesn't make anyone's life any easier or better because it just persuades people to drive instead of catching public transport. Less roads actually helps because public transport gets better.

Your analogy is broken because building more servers doesn't "get more users". You have to service a fixed number of users in the most efficient manner possible. Providing a car lane for each of them is not efficient.

Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by slyall on Friday October 10, 2014 @10:13PM (#8441002)
Imagine I get a grant from the local government to open a stall in the middle of town giving away free high-quality coffees. But it has long lines.

So I open another stall next to it but the lines don't seem to get much shorter even though I'm making twice as much coffee.

Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by nitrogen on Saturday October 11, 2014 @03:46AM (#8441559)
We all know that roads aren't free. If they weren't worth building in terms of increased economic output, however, then city planners would stop building them.
Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by tadfisher on Saturday October 11, 2014 @05:14AM (#8441675)
That seems reasonable on its face. The reality is that state and federal funding hinges on city planners padding budgets and increasing capacity to meet future growth. Meanwhile, cities and towns put themselves in hock to meet the servicing demands of their infrastructure, requiring more state and federal funding, requiring new projects with padded budgets and increased capacity.

Notice that nowhere in there was a requirement that said infrastructure pays for itself. More often than not, and especially in small towns, it doesn't.

But don't believe me, take it from a civil engineer and urban planner who has done a lot of real research into this phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn7aJ_Ti-co

Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by com2kid on Saturday October 11, 2014 @03:00PM (#8443090)
And if you open up a number of stalls equal to populationOfCity/2 your lines will go away.
Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by jorgis on Friday October 10, 2014 @09:11PM (#8440861)
By that argument, why don't we just pave everything and let people drive wherever they want?
Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by nitrogen on Saturday October 11, 2014 @03:45AM (#8441557)
Flying cars would eliminate the need for pavement altogether.
Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by icebraining on Friday October 10, 2014 @09:40PM (#8440939)
If your servers didn't make money, getting more would probably not hell you, no.
Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by wtallis on Friday October 10, 2014 @11:35PM (#8441151)
You say that as though you think there isn't a significant economic benefit to having a more efficient transportation network. Having higher-capacity roads is beneficial even if they aren't toll roads.
Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by icebraining on Saturday October 11, 2014 @04:28AM (#8441620)
You say that as though you think there isn't a significant economic benefit to having a more efficient transportation network

You're assuming that having more roads makes it more efficient, but that's not necessarily true. If having less urban roads convinces more people to use mass transit, for example, it might be more efficient.

Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by to3m on Friday October 10, 2014 @09:02PM (#8440832)
I think the discussion here is about roads?
Re:Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety by wtracy on Friday October 10, 2014 @09:17PM (#8440877)