https://blog.weksler.org/tags/engineering/ Recent content in Engineering on Michel Weksler's Blog Hugo en Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:09:00 -0800 https://blog.weksler.org/posts/sedonas-main-street-does-not-scale/ Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:09:00 -0800 https://blog.weksler.org/posts/sedonas-main-street-does-not-scale/ <div align="center">^{Traffic jam in Sedona (image credit: David Jolkovski/Larson Newspapers, Red Rock News)}</div> <p>When we visited Sedona recently and got stuck several time in pretty terrible traffic jams like this, it got me thinking about the causes. I think that traffic issues are often caused by cities scaling faster than their roads do, and while Sedona is not a very big city - around <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sedonacityarizona">10,000 people</a> according to the 2020 census, It does get a fare amount of visitors - <a href="https://sedonachamber.com/our-community/">3 million visitors in 2018</a> according to the Sedona chamber of commerce. Most of those visitors are not a surprise to Sedona city leaders. The visitors are all coming to hotels, campgrounds or <a href="https://www.sedonaaz.gov/your-government/departments/community-development/vacation-rentals/property-owner-information">registered</a> Airbnbs, so the city knows where they are staying, and can get data on how long, and use that for planning. So if we assume each of those guests stays for a week and that they are mostly spread around 8 busy months of the year, we get about 87K visitors in Sedona every day. So let’s call it 100K residents and visitors who are all moving around Sedona every day.</p>