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Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. This is the unforeseen problem with road building schemes. The solution is mass transit and city pl
by randomsearch 9y ago
Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. This is the unforeseen problem with road building schemes. The solution is mass transit and city planning to reduce road commuting.
- tbihl 9y agoI was working in the frame of parent's comment to show that delays and congestion are another solution to the problem. It's certainly not the one I'd choose, but I was trying hard to give an unaffected discussion of the tradeoffs (until the sarcasm in the last paragraph.)
- maxsilver 9y ago> Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. That is never an acceptable reason to neglect infrastructure. By your logic, we should never build hospitals because building hospitals 'creates' sick people. We should never build public water systems, since that would 'create' sewage. We should never roll out faster broadband internet, because people will simply 'waste' the bandwidth. Yes, induced demand is a concept that exists. But it's a gross misunderstanding of that concept to use it as an excuse to undersupply infrastructure capacity. > The solution is (more) mass transit I agree, that is one way to help the problem. Notice though, that it's not congestion fees on public right of way, and that it is additional infrastructure (the kind you just claimed would not work because it would create more demand).