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Why Traffic Congestion Grows Exponentially, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It // An Explainer

Ray Delahanty | CityNerd · 99.9K views · 2021-12-16 · 12:05

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Overview

CityNerd explains why traffic congestion grows nonlinearly as more cars use a road network, and why adding road capacity tends not to fix it. It covers the consequences for drivers, bus riders, cyclists and pedestrians, and discusses alternatives such as true bus rapid transit.

On Hacker News

HN commenters cite it when arguing that congestion is an exponential, feedback-driven problem so widening roads or removing a few cars behaves counterintuitively.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2022–2024

Topics

Transit, cities & urban planning
Search by tags
urbanismtraffictransportationhighwaysbus rapid transit

What people said

xracy · 2024-06 · Reference

Traffic congestion increases nonlinearly[1]. i.e. the 10th car on a road has a smaller effect than the 100th car on the road. Accordingly, the cost of increasing a bus' size and decreasing its speed pales in comparison to the value derived by removing 5-20 cars from the road. [VIDEO]

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xracy · 2023-11 · Reference

ah yes, "traffic enforcement fixes traffic" That's why there exists no traffic in all of the places with traffic police. It's not at all like it's a positive feedback loop where one person messing up parking causes downstream effects for the rest of the day... [VIDEO]

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jewayne · 2022-06 · Reference

Here's a video on the topic: ("Why Traffic Congestion Grows Exponentially, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It") [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Ray Delahanty | CityNerd, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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