Skinny lanes: Radical plan to speed up commute by narrowing roads
Given building new motorways costs billions, transport boffins are constantly on the lookout for new ways of squeezing more capacity out of already constrained road space.
Now they reckon they may have come up with a winner — a radical way to get more people over the asphalt.
Many roads already have dedicated high-occupancy lanes where vehicles with two or more people inside get priority.
But what about making road lanes narrower and creating “skinny lanes”? They may sound tight to travel on, however they could even be safer than standard lanes.
Think tank the Grattan Institute has flagged skinny lanes as one idea that could reward people who use smaller cars and encourage us to get out of bigger vehicles that hog precious road space.
But motorists’ organisation the NRMA has rubbished the plan as “alarming” that wouldn’t solve congestion problems as Australians buy bigger cars for good reasons.
Transport and cities program director at the Grattan Institute, Marion Terrill, told news.com.au the skinny lane proposal could be a goer.
“I love this idea. We need to become more creative in what we do about our roads,” she said.
Under the plan, current roads with several lanes would be squeezed to free up enough space for a new, even narrower, lane that would be dedicated solely to smaller cars and motorbikes.
The problem, said the report, was that as incomes had grown so had the average Australian car. It was now massive by world standards.
“The reference car width used by (peak transport agency) Austroads, 1.9 metres, is wide by international standards. It corresponds to a large car, such as a Holden Commodore, or a medium sport utility vehicle, such as a Jeep Cherokee.
“By contrast, in Europe and Asia, cars tend to be substantially smaller.”
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The report cited Japan where the long established “kei” cars were just 1.5m wide but could be driven anywhere a standard sized car could.
In Europe, so-called “city cars” such as the Fiat 500 and Renault Twingo make up 8 per cent of the market. The Twingo is just 1.6m wide.
In Australia, the Kia Picanto is of a similar width. But many of the most popular cars are wider. The Ford Focus is 1.8m, Australia’s best-selling car the Toyota Hilux comes in at 1.85m wide and the Holden Astra, a so-called “compact car” stretches beyond 2m.
“Larger cars cause more congestion than smaller cars. They not only occupy more space but also induce other drivers to slow down, partly because they impede the sight lines of those in smaller cars and partly because those in smaller vehicles know that they are likely to come off worse in any collision,” the report stated.
HOW NARROW CAN LANES GO?
The report said the standard Australian lane width was 3.5m. That could be decreased by up to 14 per cent from the current size before capacity started to fall. Decreasing lane widths by 30 per cent would only reduce overall capacity by 11 per cent.
Shaving a few centimetres of each current lane may then allow a new skinny lane to be added to some streets.
“Drivers who choose a smaller car would have the advantage of a safer, less-crowded lane. Over time, more drivers would choose to buy smaller, less congesting cars.”
The report didn’t suggest an ideal width of road. However, if a current road has three 3.5m lanes, you might be able to squeeze those down to 2.85m each which would allow the addition of a 2m skinny lane by taking over just a few centimetres of verge on either side.
A benefit of narrowing lanes was that it upped the capacity of roads but, unlike shiny new motorways, didn’t encourage new drivers onto the roads or people to swap from public transport to cars.
People in average-sized vehicles could still use the bigger lanes — although they might be closer to the motorist next to them.
SKINNY LANES SAFER
Research published in 2015 by the US-based WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities found wider road lanes led to more fatalities than narrower ones.
Lanes of between 3.25 to 3.60 metres wide, which are common in Australia, the US and parts of India, registered 6.1 to 11.8 deaths per 100,000 people.
But lanes of 2.80 to 3.25 metres wide, which many European and Asia Pacific cities have, had only 1.3 to 3.2 deaths. Very narrow lanes aren’t that safe, but they are still safer than the wide lanes we have.
The reason is pretty obvious. Motorists drive slower on narrower roads as they don’t want to hit one another. And if you do hit a pedestrian it will be at a slower speed, so the pedestrian is more likely to survive.
Not only are vehicles in narrow lanes generally driven slower, smaller cars take up less space, so the roads could be less congested. That may mean people get to work quicker as there are less snarl-ups.
ALARMING PLAN
The NRMA wasn’t convinced though with the motoring organisation labelling the plans “pretty alarming”.
“I don't think this idea will get much traction. It won’t really solve the congestion problem,” spokesman Peter Khoury told news.com.au.
“You can’t narrow the lanes of say the Sydney Harbour Bridge, for instance, because there are already concerns about trucks, cars and buses sharing the road safely.”
Mr Khoury said road space shouldn’t be used to change consumer car buying habits and there were already incentives to buy smaller cars such as increased fuel efficiency. Nonetheless, Australian still bought bigger cars in more numbers.
“You can’t compare Australia to Sweden or Japan. Australians buy cars for very different reasons from people overseas. We have fewer public transport options so the family car is not just something to drive the kids to school in, it has to do everything.”
On Monday, the Grattan Institute flagged another idea to reduce bottlenecks — the introduction of tolls to enter the CBDs of Melbourne and Sydney.
A congestion charge, it said, could increase speeds in the CBDs by up to 16 per cent and 1 per cent on the road network overall.
That compared favourably to expensive new roads, such as Sydney’s $17 billion West Connex motorway and Melbourne’s $16 billion North East Link freeway, that are projected to speed up overall travel times by between 1 and 3 per cent.
“It’s pretty hard to get a 1 per cent network wide rise in speed,” Ms Terrill told news.com.au.
“You can get it by building a freeway for $16 billion or you can get it through a CBD congestion charge with no cost to the taxpayer.”
But both the New South Wales and Victorian governments said they had no truck with the new vehicle charge plan.
NSW Roads Minister Andrew Constance has previously said: “It’s not going to happen. You provide better public transport; you don’t need to introduce a congestion tax.”
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