Overview of the Causes of Congestion - Road Traffic Congestion - page 32

Fig. 4.1 Holland Tunnel Bottleneck (1940) — 27 lanes trying to get into 2 lanes. Source Reference
[ 4 ], p 110

tunnel exceeds the number of lanes these facilities have. An early example of a
1940 bottleneck at the Holland Tunnel in New York City is shown in Fig. 4.1 ,
where traf c from 27 lanes is merging into two Tunnel lanes.

Bottlenecks are also created by roadway incidents that reduce block travel lanes
and restrict traf

flow, or they are created by bad weather conditions (e.g., ice on a
bridge), a work zone, poorly timed traf

c fl

c signals, or driver behavior.
The next three chapters discuss the basic causes of congestion in greater detail.
Chapter 5 covers the causes of demand concentration; Chap. 6 describes the issues
of population and economic growth, growth in car use, and insuf

cient capacity;
and Chap. 7 discusses bottlenecks as the third major cause of congestion.

References

1. McClintock M (1925) Street traffic control s.l. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York
2. Vickery SW (1963) Pricing in urban and suburban transport. s.l. reprinted in Smerk GM (ed)
Reading in urban transportation, Indiana University Press, American economic review: papers
and proceedings
3. Button JK, Verhoef TE (eds) (1988) Road pricing, traf c congestion and the environment

—

issues of and social feasibility. Eder Elgar Publishing Inc, Northampton
4. Geddes NB (1893 - 1958) Magic motorways. Random House, New York, 1940