>>2050670There never was a HW2 straight to the city, the on street capacity now is approximately the same it was 15 years ago. One paraller road was made public transport only, which pushed cars to this section and made them use eastern HW2 -> road-in-question connection that was very underused before (as it was surrounded by greenfields and lead to industrial area, now its surrounded by housing development). The on-street traffic volumes today are larger than they were in models "with the tunnel implemented" made about 15 years ago AND the traffic is fine.
There are two problems with the models and how they were used. Firstly, models showed there would be on average 10 km/h traffic on about 400 yard portion (black), meaning that travel times would increase by 3-4 minutes during peak congestion. In public debate and political decision making (by the experts!) this was framed as gridlock, when in fact everyone would get to their destinations just 4 minutes later. Congestion pricing model and its impact on traffic, as an alternative for the tunnel, was never researched. Other options, like limiting certain left-turns or bridges that skip the problematic northern intersection were also never researched.
Another problem was was that forementioned "gridlock" was bundled with the unfounded claim that the congestion (because of the lack of tunnel) would make public transport corridor (light rail) impossible to implement, wish just wasn't true. This went even a bit further, with claims that free traffic flow is key to all development around this very urban area. All other projects could of course be developed without the tunnel, at the (rather minimal) cost of traffic clow. City has strategic priority list (1. pedestrian, 2. cycling, 3. public transport, 4. freight, 5. private car) but for whatever reason here it is once again ignored.
captcha: GRONG
