Do you have a problem reading at an 8th grade level?
That's not what I wrote. Let me try to explain it again.
There is a road with 3 lanes in each direction. There are consistant traffic jams. A lane is added in each direction. There remain consistant traffic jams. Why? Because the problem was NOT A LACK OF ROAD SPACE OR CAPACITY. The problem is a severe REDUCTION of road capacity due to POOR DRIVERS.
I've seen roads laid out in the 17th century or maybe earlier flow auto more traffic faster than straight as an arrow 6 lane arterials. The difference was the drivers. No slinky effects, no lane blocking, people knew how to drive for the system's overall efficiency. That's the difference. In the USA people take forever to get going, they don't go on green, we all have to wait until the car in front of us moves. They don't understand lane usage, there pbutting lane blockers, ducklings (people driving side by side), MFFY drivers, etc and so forth out for themselves not giving a poo about the overall road efficiency.
Adding extra lanes is of limited value not because of 'build it and they will come' but because it doesn't address the REAL PROBLEM of driver behavior. The extra lane helps geting around the poor drivers. It makes it more difficult for them to totally block up a road so there is some improvement. But the problem still remains and if traffic volumes just go up enough to make that alignment of another poor driver just as likely then we are back at the start. It's driver behavior that doesn't allow us to get the full capacity of the roads we have.