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Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

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Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#131

Post by tshaddox »

mrfusion wrote: post #113
azylman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends what your success criteria is. It's true, you've successfully increased the throughput of the transit network, but you haven't done anything to improve transit times - you just have more people stuck in traffic now. There are other ways you could have spent that same amount of money (public transit) that both increase the throughput of the network _and_ improve transit times.

But those extra people are choosing to be there so there must be some benefit.

They're choosing to be there now, precisely like they were choosing to not be there before you changed the roads. Other people are also choosing to not be there, and instead choosing to live in the woods in northern Canada. I'm not sure how this mode of argument is really demonstrating anything. It seems like you just considering literally any state of affairs other than active physical coercion to be a good state of affairs.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#132

Post by seanmcdirmid »

whatshisface wrote: post #71
kaesar14 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the metric people care about is traffic on the roads, not how many motorists are able to use the road in a given day. The Big Dig by this metric was a resounding success in Boston, able to dramatically scale up the amount of commuters in and out of the city, but driving still absolutely sucks because of traffic. To the person on the road, the Big Dig solved nothing. Parent comment is saying the only way to sc…

If the metric was really traffic, then that could easily be solved on any road by only allowing even-numbered license numbers to drive on even-numbered days, and vice-versa. If that's an absurd solution, then traffic severity is not the only metric.

> If the metric was really traffic, then that could easily be solved on any road by only allowing even-numbered license numbers to drive on even-numbered days, and vice-versa.

They tried this in Beijing. People would just buy second cars so they could drive on both days. Eventually they had to restrict new license plates as well.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#133

Post by erik_seaberg »

azylman wrote: post #45
dragontamer wrote: post #5

I'm not surprised. I've taken this road before during the 2017 Eclipse. Its a path that connects major parts of the country together, but there are no alternative roads to take if this one road closes. Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so here. I've been told that Virginia once had plans to build additional highways / alternative roa…

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

“People drive more instead of giving up and staying home” is latent demand being met. “People drive more because building the highways made everything farther apart” is induced demand being created.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#134

Post by azylman »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #104
azylman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

> Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand This continues to be wrong every time someone brings it up. If you have insufficient road capacity, you have congestion, and congestion suppresses demand. If you increase capacity, some of the congestion goes away, and then some of the demand comes back. What this looks like is that you currently have enough c…

> Sometimes you just need a wider road. Pretending that's never the case is preposterous. If that was true then why do we keep multi-lane highways open instead of closing all but one of the lanes? Wouldn't that improve traffic, under this theory?

You're setting up this strawman where the argument is "improve roads" vs. "do nothing". That's obviously not the case. The argument is "improve roads" vs. "improve public transit". Demonstrably, improving roads is worse than improving public transit. You refer to this as a "fool's conclusion" yet this has been a well-known fact in the field for almost a century. The wikipedia article I linked has some good information on this if you'd like to learn more.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#135

Post by beerandt »

kube-system wrote: post #26
s5300 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pulling this out of really old knowledge I’ve not looked over in years so may be incorrect… While you are right about “not well”, the other option can often be “not at all” The batteries used in most EV’s should always work to some degree, with regards to temperatures experienced on Earth - the batteries & other systems in most ICE can be completely crippled/not work at all under certain temps faced on Earth Now,…

The saving grace with ICE is that they are so inefficient that they literally are mostly heat generators that also produce some mechanical force as a significant byproduct. They might not like starting in the cold, but once they're started, they're fine.

There's similar efficiency losses for EVs, but (besides battery efficiency or thermal penalties) they're just further upstream.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#136

Post by mjmahone17 »

whatshisface wrote: post #51
azylman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.

Road usage isn’t necessarily success. For a political region, economic activity is usually considered a success.

If by building a larger road through your city, you induce people to live outside of your city instead of in it, then you’ve added costs while reducing your economic activity, while creating more total wasted hours in traffic in the process.

Are the trade offs worth it? Sometimes! But induced traffic demand is not by itself a success criteria for regions: it’s only a success if it means more people are able to work and have higher productivity in a region, as opposed to just spreading out the existing workers and reducing their productivity through increased commute times.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#137

Post by [deleted] »

shkkmo wrote: post #65
whatshisface wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.

> I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That depends on what you see as the goal. If the goal is reducing congestion, then induced demand means that particular goal is harder to achieve. If the goal is to get more people driving then induced demand is a clear success.

[deleted]

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#138

Post by azylman »

nostromo wrote: post #87
whatshisface wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.

Yeah, they're shifting the goal posts. Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people. So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course. Speedbumps everywhere . Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes. Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make through streets dead ends. Transit still mostly sucks, but now driving sucks too. Success! I love transit and…

> Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people...So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course. Speedbumps everywhere. Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes. Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make through streets dead ends.

This is obviously not the solution that anyone is proposing. You're arguing in bad faith against a strawman. The solution to bad public transit is to make public transit better.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#139

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kbutler wrote: post #23
cortesoft wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm if a doordash driver could get to them, then the cars could just leave themselves.

"...on snowmobiles..." So the drivers could leave, but the cars would remain stranded.

Are there that many snow mobiles in VA?

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#140

Post by twoodfin »

tshaddox wrote: post #127
whatshisface wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.

In some sense I understand what you're saying, but that mode of argument has limitations. Like, you certainly wouldn't say "I don't understand how increasing medical costs doesn't count as success, that means people want to spend their money on medical care, doesn't it?"

If you doubled the number of hospital beds, doctors, nurses, diagnostic equipment, labs … and demand was high enough to keep prices constant, you’ve doubled healthcare access at a rate patients were already willing to pay.

“Induced demand” in every other industry is described as “latent demand”.

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