Where has all the traffic gone?

Traffic counts are declining in our area. I had heard recently that the traffic on I84 between Caldwell and Boise has declined by 9% in April 2009. So I thought I would see if our ACHD traffic guru, Terry Little, had any numbers for Ada County. It would make sense that if less people were coming in from Canyon County, then the traffic in Ada County would be less as well.

And it turns out this is the case.

All of these locations show the decrease from March 2006 to March 2009. These figures are from the State website.

Capitol Bridge down 2.1%
Veteran's Bridge down 8.68%
Eagle Rd down 7.45%
Broadway at I84 down 13.75%
Linder Rd down 16.15%
Cole Rd at I84 down 10.12%

Just on these 6 roads, there were 15815 less cars in 2009 than in 2006. I think this has some pretty big policy implications for the building of huge new roads. They may not be needed, instead we need to improve intersections and just time the lights to keep the traffic flowing.