[theoreticalmal]

I have a lot of difficulty thinking those changes alone would solve congestion. I’m especially thinking is ski traffic along I70 from Denver to the mountains. The issue is just volume of passenger vehicles, and there are no other realistic routes

[alfiedotwtf]

Just drive anywhere with more than usual density in traffic and you’ll find trucks in the fast lane when they stop and start create gaps in the fast lane where no traffic can go. If you took out trucks altogether during peak hours you wouldn’t have these slow bubbles of traffic at the worst times..

Edit: let’s think of this from a pure scientific point of view - if you had 3 lanes and split traffic across them based on a range of speed - that would be the most optimised in terms of throughput for all lanes. Now, consider a reverse Amdahl's Law… what’s the worst thing you could do to make the fastest lane crawl which in effect kills total throughput across ALL lanes? Put a slow truck in it! Put a few, and you’ve just turned the lane giving you the highest throughput to most likely the slowest lane.

I just parked my car after another morning of commuting. Thought experiments alone in today’s traffic again confirmed my theory.

[rchard2scout]

Contrary to this, if you only have two lanes available, and trucks aren't allowed to overtake, you'll eventually end up with a long train of trucks without any gaps, and it'll become impossible to merge onto the highway from an on-ramp.

[alfiedotwtf]

if trucks had free reign before and after peak times, this wouldn't happen