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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

#141

Post by s1artibartfast »

xp84 wrote: post #134
throwaway22032 wrote: post #5

"Induced demand" as a reason not to do something is illogical. The Green Revolution increasing crop yields induced demand for humans. Metro systems existing and building new lines induce demand, in some cases resulting in overcrowding. Building housing and offices induce demand in a location. There is nothing wrong with improving a thing so that more people are able to do that thing. I can understand concern about em…

Main issue is that traffic ‘misery’ (my term) is the constant. There is a maximum amount of gridlockedness before people naturally stop bothering to think they should begin using a given road (say, by moving farther out into the suburbs, or moving into some far suburb from outside the metro to take a job in the city). You can add 3 more lanes, and right away, more people believe they can make that lifestyle change, a…

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, which I chose because it is preferable to my housing options near work. You couln't pay me enough to live in a condo downtown. I wish transportation infrastructure was even better so that I could live further and this is where I would like my taxes directed.

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

#142

Post by throwaway22032 »

xp84 wrote: post #134
throwaway22032 wrote: post #5

"Induced demand" as a reason not to do something is illogical. The Green Revolution increasing crop yields induced demand for humans. Metro systems existing and building new lines induce demand, in some cases resulting in overcrowding. Building housing and offices induce demand in a location. There is nothing wrong with improving a thing so that more people are able to do that thing. I can understand concern about em…

Main issue is that traffic ‘misery’ (my term) is the constant. There is a maximum amount of gridlockedness before people naturally stop bothering to think they should begin using a given road (say, by moving farther out into the suburbs, or moving into some far suburb from outside the metro to take a job in the city). You can add 3 more lanes, and right away, more people believe they can make that lifestyle change, a…

Yes!

You can add lanes, and more people can attain the life that they wish to lead.

You're not back where you started, because more people get to do what they want to do.

It seems as if you have the intrinsic axiom that people should travel less and the fact that they are not doing this is somehow wrong. Your model is wrong.

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

#143

Post by ocschwar »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #4
ocschwar wrote: post #2

Massachusetts has not widened highways inside of 128 for 50 years now. And I am so grateful for that.

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.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #106
walthamstow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that public transport is a reflection of the local society. You can accept it, work to improve it, or hide from it in your private vehicle. Here in London, hardly a quaint and sleepy village, everyone uses public transport, including beggars and hoodlums as you put it, and it's fine.

We simply disagree that public transport (or society in general) has to accept everyone regardless of how badly they behave. It has nothing to do with "sectors of society". If you want me on the bus, kick off the dickheads. Making driving worse will not get me on the bus however much you attempt to manipulate me emotionally.

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #106
walthamstow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that public transport is a reflection of the local society. You can accept it, work to improve it, or hide from it in your private vehicle. Here in London, hardly a quaint and sleepy village, everyone uses public transport, including beggars and hoodlums as you put it, and it's fine.

We simply disagree that public transport (or society in general) has to accept everyone regardless of how badly they behave. It has nothing to do with "sectors of society". If you want me on the bus, kick off the dickheads. Making driving worse will not get me on the bus however much you attempt to manipulate me emotionally.

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by walthamstow »

walthamstow wrote: post #108
throwaway22032 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We simply disagree that public transport (or society in general) has to accept everyone regardless of how badly they behave. It has nothing to do with "sectors of society". If you want me on the bus, kick off the dickheads. Making driving worse will not get me on the bus however much you attempt to manipulate me emotionally.

Not every individual, obviously, I meant all sectors of society, as you probably knew but chose to ignore in favour of a snipe

As my interlocutor has changed his message repeatedly, this no longer makes sense.

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

#147

Post by xp84 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #141
xp84 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main issue is that traffic ‘misery’ (my term) is the constant. There is a maximum amount of gridlockedness before people naturally stop bothering to think they should begin using a given road (say, by moving farther out into the suburbs, or moving into some far suburb from outside the metro to take a job in the city). You can add 3 more lanes, and right away, more people believe they can make that lifestyle change, a…

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 commute is, best case, the same, maybe a little worse, because if it gets better, more people will squeeze into your suburb. You also have the option to move even farther out, but your commute will on average always be roughly as bad as it is today because people in your situation tolerate about that level of 'misery.' (Again that's how i conceptualize the variable, not saying you're literally miserable).

Yes, I suppose stimulating another splash of suburbs out in the countryside does provide Y more people an opportunity to become long-distance commuters, but I'd say:

Surely there's some limit, right? You wouldn't say that California should bulldoze neighborhoods in all the closer suburbs in order to make I-80 30 lanes wide as it gets closer to the Bay, so that people can commute from new suburbs built 150 miles away... right? And if there's some limit to reasonable highway size, why not the current size. And if we want to further increase capacity to bring in humans to a city, build a bullet train and bring them in in a way that's more efficient than individual 6,000 pound SUVs for each commuter. That's where I'd direct incremental transportation dollars. That, or subsidize commercial development nearer population centers so that people who live 2 hours from the city have other options.

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

#148

Post by ocschwar »

mdorazio wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #17

I'd rather see efforts to make mass transit more attractive and encourage its use in a POSITIVE way, rather than using a stick of clogging the roads and punishing people into using mass transit. Win the market, don't just quash what you don't like. I can imagine this easily being responded to negatively in the end and the political response is to give in and the pendulum swings wildly in the other direction. In the e…

How do you propose doing that, though? Mass transit almost everywhere runs at a significant loss already and if we're talking buses then there's a significant driver shortage. In the US the distances and routes required outside of dense urban centers also pretty much necessitate a huge increase in transit time compared to driving, making the whole thing a bad value for people who can afford a car.

> How do you propose doing that, though?

Thankfully, Massachusetts has shown how to do that.

The governor has to make a public statement that he will not allow any more eminent domain takings for highways on his watch (and issue executive orders to that effect.)

After that, the people complaining about traffic have to come up with their own ideas, and if road widening (with eminent domain confiscations) are off the table, even the most car-headed idiot out there has no choice but start talking about transit.

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

#149

Post by ocschwar »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #5

"Induced demand" as a reason not to do something is illogical. The Green Revolution increasing crop yields induced demand for humans. Metro systems existing and building new lines induce demand, in some cases resulting in overcrowding. Building housing and offices induce demand in a location. There is nothing wrong with improving a thing so that more people are able to do that thing. I can understand concern about em…

That depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to people out in the periphery who want their towns to grow, induced demand is not a problem.

But for someone in an inner ring suburb, induced demand means that if the interstate near my house is widened, I don't get an easier commute. I just get more pollution and more noise and the same traffic misery as before.

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

#150

Post by appplication »

balfirevic wrote: post #138
appplication wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, a motorcycle is a complete nonstarter for this reason. It’s just not responsible for anyone with a family.

Would you say the same thing for bicycles, in places without dedicated bicycle lanes?

I’m an avid cyclist who’s been in a few crashes. I will absolutely not bike commute in dangerous parts of the city. So yes, I’d say the same.
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