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> For a city with no alternatives (like no meaningful public transit), it's impossible to induce traffic demand, because demand is already at 100%. Traffic stil

> For a city with no alternatives (like no meaningful public transit), it's impossible to induce traffic demand, because demand is already at 100%. Traffic still grows as population grows, but a person can only physically drive one car at a time, it's currently impossible to induce any higher demand than that. This is not true. An example is Houston building a 26 lane highway only to lead to ~40 increased commute times [1]. Initially commute times decreased, but then the population felt they could move farther out into the suburbs, get a more affordable house, and still have the same commute time. Once enough people did this traffic times got worse. So, demand increased. [1] http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/01/highway-boondoggle-uspirg/424700/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/01/highway-boondoggle-us...

true_religion 10y ago
It'd seem in that case it's not that demand increased but that people moved further way from their final destination so their commute time was increased. It may very well be that the same people are still driving or wanting to drive, but simply by living further away the commute times have gone up.
- 7952 10y ago
  If people travel further then demand has increased. It is strange how people think about congestion in terms of number of people rather than miles driven. A single car that hits several choke points on a 50 mile commute is causing far more congestion than a vehicle travelling 5 miles. Yet the users are treated exactly the same and never get any social pressure to reduce their demand.