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Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

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Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#241

Post by yason »

sokoloff wrote: post #101
yason wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are given an opportunity to do something and then they do it. If you don't put a price on it then people won't prioritise, and the demand becomes endless. And you can never have supply to meet an endless demand.

It still costs $0.10-0.20 to drive a marginal mile, so the demand is far from unpriced/infinite.

Driving miles anywhere costs the same. Compared to the annual cost of owning a car making an extra 15 mile trip is absolute peanuts. The problem occurs when 1000 people decide to make that very extra trip just because capacity makes it possible and it's otherwise free to use.

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#242

Post by zmmmmm »

BurningFrog wrote: post #203

Here is the BIG elephant on the road. Why road consumption is different than all other consumptions: We don't pay for road usage!!! Anything useful that is handed out to consumers at the cost of $0.00 will be overused and develop a shortage. This is so ingrained that it can be hard to think about. Anyway, if we had to pay to access roads, depending on the traffic load, traffic could always flow at full speed, road in…

> Anything useful that is handed out to consumers at the cost of $0.00 will be overused and develop a shortage.

Can you explain how I still seem to have enough oxygen to breathe?

I get the point, but I don't like the absolutism applied in these kind of arguments. Similarly, I can go to a small country town with a 2 lane highway through it and somehow building that road did not induce congestion despite the fact that the article asserts a 1:1 correlation between congestion and building roads.

Obviously these are silly arguments but it still all goes back to the point that we need to figure out how to model these things and each situation should be modeled and engineered on its own merits. Turning the argument into just an alternative form of dogma to what caused the problem originally is actually almost as bad as the original problem.

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#243

Post by lazyjones »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #221
lazyjones wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes it looks like the Silicon Valley is trying to solve transit problems either against the laws of physics and economics or, alternatively, ignoring solutions that were there already in the 1800s. That, or the Old World is simply stuck with cities where no more roads can be built without tearing down many inhabited buildings, so people are forced to use smelly, uncomfortable public transport. I'd appreciate…

> I'd appreciate more honesty and less ideology in such debates and yet > forced to use smelly, uncomfortable public transport There is no need to public transport to be smelly and uncomfortable if enough money is spent on maintenance.

> There is no need to public transport to be smelly and uncomfortable if enough money is spent on maintenance.

I live in Vienna, which has arguably some of the best maintained and expensive public transport. It's still smelly, because people. They forbid food (initially only smelly food, but signs - pictograms in the subway - show any/all types of food) recently because people complained and during last summer the administration handed out free deodorants to passengers.

Sorry, public transport IS uncomfortable and smelly, like most places with many people.

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#244

Post by lazyjones »

Johnny555 wrote: post #198
lazyjones wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people are noisy and smelly. Indeed. And trains usually don't go from people's homes to their destination, so they typically cause traffic of some sort around train stations.

Ideally, people live near transit (not so common in this country, but Transit Oriented Development near transit stations is becoming more popular), so they don't necessarily need to drive to the station. But even when they do, it's easier to handle traffic spread among dozens of stations spread out over 100 miles of track than to have all of those commuters drive to the city center.

> But even when they do, it's easier to handle traffic spread among dozens of stations spread out over 100 miles of track than to have all of those commuters drive to the city center.

Commuters don't all drive to the city center, they drive to 1000s of working places and arguably that's easier to handle traffic-wise than the traffic around fewer train stations (in one city!).

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#245

Post by chadcmulligan »

lazyjones wrote: post #243
chadcmulligan wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd appreciate more honesty and less ideology in such debates and yet > forced to use smelly, uncomfortable public transport There is no need to public transport to be smelly and uncomfortable if enough money is spent on maintenance.

> There is no need to public transport to be smelly and uncomfortable if enough money is spent on maintenance. I live in Vienna, which has arguably some of the best maintained and expensive public transport. It's still smelly, because people. They forbid food (initially only smelly food, but signs - pictograms in the subway - show any/all types of food) recently because people complained and during last summer the ad…

I'm in Australia and the public transport is clean here. No food is allowed, and its enforced. There is the occasional smelly person, particularly in summer, unavoidable. In general though it works well.

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#246

Post by lazyjones »

baddox wrote: post #191
lazyjones wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When traffic expands to fill all available roads, this solution is an expensive way to not fix anything. It always surprises me to see people actually believe this utter illogical nonsense. There's a finite amount of people and cars, so new roads satisfy existing demands but do not magically increase traffic until everybody drives 24/7 and beyond. There are plenty of roads with very little traffic. Hasn't anyone of…

Of course it’s true that people and cars are finite, but that doesn’t mean that new roads are satisfying existing demands. In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people commute to the city from further away.

> In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people commute to the city from further away.

It's a theoretical concept with no basis in reality as far as traffic is concerned. Every statistic I know of shows that more people move to cities, not farther away despite new roads. What drives people to longer commutes is not new roads, but high housing prices in cities.

Also, when you build useful roads, traffic there certainly increases, but somehow ideologists neglect to measure how traffic on other roads previously used for the same route decreases.

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#247

Post by CalRobert »

marcosdumay wrote: post #190
CalRobert wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not - affordable homes are great. Building more homes near the places people need to be will help make them more affordable. But nobody ever got votes by campaigning to reduce home prices. Perhaps because you have to live in a place to vote for those governing said place.

Rationing transport does not solve that problem. It does nothing at all to solve it, just makes it worse.

You can build homes near where oeople want to be, or farther. Or hope people emigrate or die. Which is better for transport?

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#248

Post by CalRobert »

ndnxhs wrote: post #232
CalRobert wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think operating your car in a way that kills a cyclist, where there could be cyclists (anywhere not the freeway) should be criminal negligence, not an "accident". Presumed liability laws exist in places that are nice to cycle so drivers know they could face real legal consequences. I can't go accidentally shooting people on the street and expect just a fine. Generally people who kill others with their car get off f…

Agreed. If you are driving in an area where there are bikes or pedestrians around you should slow to about 30km/h.

If hit at 25 mph people survive 90% of the time. At 50 mph they die 90% of the time. Yet many cities in the US plop 45 mph roads where people live.

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#249

Post by lazyjones »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #245
lazyjones wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no need to public transport to be smelly and uncomfortable if enough money is spent on maintenance. I live in Vienna, which has arguably some of the best maintained and expensive public transport. It's still smelly, because people. They forbid food (initially only smelly food, but signs - pictograms in the subway - show any/all types of food) recently because people complained and during last summer the ad…

I'm in Australia and the public transport is clean here. No food is allowed, and its enforced. There is the occasional smelly person, particularly in summer, unavoidable. In general though it works well.

I'd like to see some pictures of the inside of a subway train in the center of Melbourne on 6am on a Saturday... ;-)

It's a mentality issue - Singapore and Japan are also famous for clean public transport, but in most countries it's simply not possible.

Re: Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

#250

Post by CalRobert »

User23 wrote: post #132
epistasis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says a lot more about your worldview than the original poster's that you jump to assuming a 50 mile bike, rather than the simpler notion that people live close to where they work. Is it really so shocking to live that close to a gardener? What is outlandish about that?

I specified Southern California. If you’re unfamiliar with the dynamics of the region it makes sense that you think it’s outlandish.

We can discuss the practicalites of commuting on the sun, too, if you like.
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