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Also roads are built for the peak consumption. Outside the peak, there's generally excess capacity quietly eating away space from pedestrians and human beings.

by yason 10y ago

mjevans 10y ago
This is VERY MUCH a falsehood. Have you ever commuted during the very ironically named 'rush hour'. (Everyone would much rather go fast, and it usually takes much longer than an hour)
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Just because it was originally built for peak demand doesn't mean peak demand won't eventually exceed that as the population grows.
- malyk 10y ago
  It's called "Induced Demand". That combined with "drive until you qualify" lead to over congestion on roads that were built to "peak" demand.
briandear 10y ago
Roads are built for average consumption. If they were built for peak consumption there'd be no such thing as rush hour or traffic jams. You could make the same argument about sidewalks -- at 4am, sidewalks have excess capacity eating away space that could be instead planted with foliage and serve as a habitat for animals. Unless there's 24/7 equal use of everything, there's always going to be excess capacity at some point. Your bathroom is unused probably 90% of the day, so why not open it up for neighbors to share? That would be far more efficient than having every house with their own bathroom.
- VLM 10y ago
  I sleep less than 12 hours per day... I only type on my keyboard maybe half the day, so I could share a keyboard at work to save huge amounts of capital on a world wide basis. The dystopian world of the future looks like life on board a nuclear attack submarine, where no one owns a car, everyone works at home, two people have to share a bed (involuntarily, mostly), no one is allowed to cook their own food, only a tiny percentage of the population have the intelligence and social skills to survive it but everyone is united that everyone should be forced at the point of a gun to live exactly this way, all your time and your entire life is planned out by big brother with little to no care about your own personal concerns, living density is extremely high, no one can have kids, the whole lifestyle is financed by hand waving and ridiculous unsustainable and unscalable financial scams, constant uncontrollable interruptions, energy all comes from green (ish) sources which are ecologically harmless unless some pipe springs a leak and then an entire village dies horribly, apparently people do nothing when off duty and have no personal hobbies other than getting drunk in cheap dive bars as often as possible, your life depends on a minimum of 500 CPUs all programmed by the lowest bidder with a literal army of people trying to crack security which would result fairly inevitably in your rapid and painful death. But other than that, its pretty awesome.
- yason 10y ago
  The fact that we can't physically nor practically build ourselves out of congestion (and that demand is always induced to become the higher the more roadspace we build) doesn't change the fact that it's exactly the rush hour traffic that warrants the construction of new roads, bypasses, ramps, and is used to validate road widening. No city would be building more capacity without the pain that is the rush hour traffic.

Also roads are built for the peak consumption. Outside the peak, there's generally excess capacity quietly eating away space from pedestrians and human beings.

by yason 10y ago

Also roads are built for the peak consumption. Outside the peak, there's generally excess capacity quietly eating away space from pedestrians and human beings.

mjevans 10y ago

This is VERY MUCH a falsehood. Have you ever commuted during the very ironically named 'rush hour'. (Everyone would much rather go fast, and it usually takes much longer than an hour)

TulliusCicero 10y ago
Just because it was originally built for peak demand doesn't mean peak demand won't eventually exceed that as the population grows.
malyk 10y ago
It's called "Induced Demand". That combined with "drive until you qualify" lead to over congestion on roads that were built to "peak" demand.

briandear 10y ago

Roads are built for average consumption. If they were built for peak consumption there'd be no such thing as rush hour or traffic jams. You could make the same argument about sidewalks -- at 4am, sidewalks have excess capacity eating away space that could be instead planted with foliage and serve as a habitat for animals. Unless there's 24/7 equal use of everything, there's always going to be excess capacity at some point. Your bathroom is unused probably 90% of the day, so why not open it up for neighbors to share? That would be far more efficient than having every house with their own bathroom.

VLM 10y ago
I sleep less than 12 hours per day... I only type on my keyboard maybe half the day, so I could share a keyboard at work to save huge amounts of capital on a world wide basis. The dystopian world of the future looks like life on board a nuclear attack submarine, where no one owns a car, everyone works at home, two people have to share a bed (involuntarily, mostly), no one is allowed to cook their own food, only a tiny percentage of the population have the intelligence and social skills to survive it but everyone is united that everyone should be forced at the point of a gun to live exactly this way, all your time and your entire life is planned out by big brother with little to no care about your own personal concerns, living density is extremely high, no one can have kids, the whole lifestyle is financed by hand waving and ridiculous unsustainable and unscalable financial scams, constant uncontrollable interruptions, energy all comes from green (ish) sources which are ecologically harmless unless some pipe springs a leak and then an entire village dies horribly, apparently people do nothing when off duty and have no personal hobbies other than getting drunk in cheap dive bars as often as possible, your life depends on a minimum of 500 CPUs all programmed by the lowest bidder with a literal army of people trying to crack security which would result fairly inevitably in your rapid and painful death. But other than that, its pretty awesome.
yason 10y ago
The fact that we can't physically nor practically build ourselves out of congestion (and that demand is always induced to become the higher the more roadspace we build) doesn't change the fact that it's exactly the rush hour traffic that warrants the construction of new roads, bypasses, ramps, and is used to validate road widening. No city would be building more capacity without the pain that is the rush hour traffic.