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In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

nytimes.com

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Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#151

Post by s1artibartfast »

xp84 wrote: post #147
s1artibartfast wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this analysi simply ignores the upside. you say that both miles driven and human time wasted are metrics we dont want to increase, but people are clearly willing to trade them off. You say people should live near work, but at what cost? In practice, they are public funds so it ends up being a public decision. Do people support spending $X so that Y people can obtain Z preference. I'm off to my 1 hr commute right now,…

Thanks for the reply. You have a 1 hour commmute because the good house you can afford is about 1 hour away. I would propose that if we (all taxpayers) added 6 more lanes to the road you drive to work, your commute would dip for a short while, more people just like you would move to the new suburbs beyond yours, that are now an (improved for them) 1 hour commute, eventually re-saturating the new wider road. Now your…

To clarify, I'm not dogmatic about Transportation methods, at least for work commuting. I would love if cheap mass transit took some load off of local roads and the highway system so that they could be more effectively used for tasks besides commutes.

I mostly wanted to highlight that there's a trade off of preferences at play. Using your terms, Urban living is also a misery for many people. If you want to talk about Misery, listen to some Millennials and Zoomers that feel priced out of ever owning a home or starting a family.

It seems like most of these induced demand arguments I see start from the conclusion they want (dense Urban living) and reverse engineers a justification.

As you point out, High speed rail also induces Transportation demand.

It's not that increasing highway bandwidth doesn't work (it does). This doesn't preclude the idea that alternatives solutions or a hybrid can't be more efficient.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#152

Post by peapicker »

rpcope1 wrote: post #93
peapicker wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I moved here in the mid 1990’s we now have added light rail to Golden, down to Lincoln on I-25, all the way up I225, and I70 from downtown to the airport. Not exactly nothing. Rail to Loveland/Ft Collins would be a great addition.

Sure, maybe a little more trackage around Denver, but don't you remember all the controversy how the space and money to run light rail along 36 went away and we wound up with just a new express lane in its place? Maybe Jared will actually get something done and they'll run light rail in tandem with the BNSF line from Denver all the way north, but I'm still really skeptical because I've heard "it's just 3-4 years out,…

Even tho I’ve heard nothing, light rail from 9mile to downtown Parker would be another great nice to have.

It is slow.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#153

Post by ambyra »

sotix wrote: post #140
someguydave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorcyles have a roughly 30 times higher fatality rate per mile driven compared to cars

Motorcycles are not safe, and certainly not safer than cars. However, you can reduce the extreme fatality rate significantly if you cut out drunk riding and even more so if you have more than six months of experience and wear all the gear all the time. It’s a risky activity that attracts people that don’t make smart decisions. When I got my license, the five others in my class all owned a motorcycle and rode them for…

I think that’s limited to the US. In Thailand, kids ride motorcycles from a very young age, and don’t exhibit the crazy driving on that they do here. I think if more families drove motorcycles, it would no longer be considered cool or extreme, and that behavior would disappear. It reminds me of the high drinking age situation in the United States. When people here start drinking, they end up in emergency room, which is not the case in Europe, where they have a much lower drinking age.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#154

Post by ambyra »

id00 wrote: post #128
ambyra wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try a motorcycle! The laws for lane splitting are the best in the country. You could probably fit 6 motorcycles in the space of one car.

Where should I put my toddler?

Depends where you live. In Colorado there’s no minimum age to be a motorcycle passenger. In California, the minimum age is eight, So you would need to find some alternate transportation.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#155

Post by kentonv »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #80
kentonv wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quoted a lot but misunderstood. The conclusion people seem to draw from this is that widening the highway didn't help. This is wrong. 4 lanes of bad traffic travelling at 30mph is still creating twice the value of 2 lanes of bad traffic travelling at 30mph. With the 2-lane highway you were just forcing half the people to divert to other roads or to give up on their plans entirely. With 4 lanes you're serving…

If you ask people: would you vote for bonds for a highway expansion that will not make your commute better, but will add a lot more cars to the road, they will overwhelmingly say no. There is only one reason why the public agrees to highway construction: the idea that their commute will get better. But it won't after a few years. The highway will always be full! That's induced demand. If you have a highway to a desir…

How about you ask people: Would you vote for bonds for a highway expansion that will not really make your commute better but will provide more accessible housing, bringing down housing prices, and thus allow you to have a bigger, nicer home for less money? (Even if you don't actually use the particular highway!)

If people are filling up the new lanes it's because they are getting value out of it. It's making people's lives better, even if the traffic doesn't go faster (though in many cases, it does).

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#156

Post by secstate »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #137
troyvit wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally, which is why Colorado is producing less and less food. I mean towns sprouted up where people settled and people settled to grow food, so this has been happening in Colorado since farming began here. As a result the land left for farming is getting worse and worse. The good spots have all been paved. But say we have to keep that, my next question is, what's the tax haul for a house compared to an apartment co…

Tax haul for 10 houses are better than a 10 unit complex. The people also want houses opposed to apartments (hence the higher price). This seems to be an ideological conflict where some people are trying to force everyone else into options they dont want- why? The solution seems simple. relax zoning where it exists and let people who want to live in tiny urban apartments do so, and let people who want to live in subu…

Careful how you swing that axe of relaxed zoning. Got me nearly kicked off my local town council. "Why can't that town two towns over build more apartments for our day laborers?" they all ask in unison.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#157

Post by light_hue_1 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #99
light_hue_1 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because adding hospital capacity doesn't create more sick people. Unless your hospital goes around breaking people's kneecaps to make money. Adding highways creates more traffic by telling developers to put housing in the newly accessible land.

Oh, and look, we've got all this demand for housing that isn't being addressed at the moment. Maybe what you're describing is a positive outcome? You can't be "we can't build roads because it will cause houses to be built" and "it's a crisis that nobody can afford a house" at the same time.

The demand for housing has nothing to do with highways.

Highways proscribe a particular way in which to build housing. Low density sprawl. Which results in horrible commutes people hate.

We don't need that. We need high density transit. Which results in high quality of life.

The reason housing isn't built is because cities abuse zoning laws. It's time for states to take back zoning regulations.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#158

Post by light_hue_1 »

kentonv wrote: post #155
light_hue_1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask people: would you vote for bonds for a highway expansion that will not make your commute better, but will add a lot more cars to the road, they will overwhelmingly say no. There is only one reason why the public agrees to highway construction: the idea that their commute will get better. But it won't after a few years. The highway will always be full! That's induced demand. If you have a highway to a desir…

How about you ask people: Would you vote for bonds for a highway expansion that will not really make your commute better but will provide more accessible housing, bringing down housing prices, and thus allow you to have a bigger, nicer home for less money? (Even if you don't actually use the particular highway!) If people are filling up the new lanes it's because they are getting value out of it. It's making people's…

But that's not at all what happens.

Housing cost does not go down with highway construction.

No. It's making people's lives worse. They could have better lives with transit.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#159

Post by light_hue_1 »

ocschwar wrote: post #143
light_hue_1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're actually going in reverse. In the next 2 years a horrible little spur of elevated highway that cuts through Somerville (McGrath) is getting demolished and replaced with a nice boulevard. That whole area is just blighted at the moment. It's going to become some of the nicest housing with parks and shops.

The statute of limitations on traffic offenses is brief, so I'll fess up that I've biked across the whole length a couple times. Got some Darwin Award honorable mentions doing it.

I cycle in the area but I value my life too much for that! Happy travels.

Re: In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them

#160

Post by tomrod »

vundercind wrote: post #83
tomrod wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is not a democracy. Not even at the state level. For many aspects and holons it is a representative republic.

Describing the US as a democracy is totally normal among actual experts in the study of governments (political scientists).

[citation requested]

I've seen representative democracy, and representative republic, but rarely purely one or the other.

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