What other options are there to ease traffic flow?
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Ramp metering: Ramp metering uses traffic signals to regulate when vehicles can enter the interstate system. It does smooth highway merging to avoid traffic slowdowns, but it can cause back ups onto arterial streets during increased congestion or incidents. Expensive to implement.
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Pricing highways with variable tolls: Places tolls at entrances to the highway with prices increasing during increased congestion. Paces demand for traffic through supply-price-demand “process” to achieve steady peak capacity conditions. Requires legislative changes to enable tolling on Missouri routes.
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New construction in congestion areas: Construction in some areas of congestion would require major redesign of the roadway, might require purchasing extensive right of way, or could be limited by existing roadway structures. Very expensive to implement.
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Incident response: Clears blocking conditions, reduces secondary accidents, restores traffic flow. Already in use in St. Louis.
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Information systems: helps drivers anticipate conditions along the route to help make better decisions on alternate routes. Already in use in St. Louis with Gateway Guide and 511 services.
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Why not build a larger roadway?
Traffic along I-270 flows fairly well, except at a few locations during the morning or evening commutes. This congestion is normally due to incidents, or to existing limitations on the road (narrow bridges, short entrance or exit ramps, etc.). So, although widening the road would allow more traffic on the interstate, it would also require millions of taxpayer dollars and would, in effect, move the problem into the future when traffic once again filled the highway.
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