I'm trying to understand what kind of effect adding lanes has on the effectiveness of highway transport and I...can't. Suppose you have a single lane highway between A and B. In theory, its capacity is infinite.
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It's not infinite. You're right. The capacity is bounded by the maximum speed of cars and their length relative to the length of the road. That said, we're so far from that capacity, it's basically infinite.
I'm unsure how to calculate the true capacity of the road, but: Suppose 1,000,000 cars needed to go 10 miles from point A to point B. Max car speed is 100 mph. Car length is 15 feet. It takes 6 minutes to go 10 miles at 100 mph. Every 10th of a second, a car onramps...
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Not sure if this is a fair comparison, but...similar drive in NYC at 8:30 AM on a monday.pic.twitter.com/9tICNzfImd
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The minimum distance between cars grows with the speed (because it takes longer to slow down) though. So we should probably use that for max capacity. The 3 second rule implies 3 seconds (or ~450 feet).
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...assuming you're going full speed. If you go slow because of a jam, not sure what determines the capacity, but i suspect the junctions.
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