4 ms·

> Is this even a problem? People are given an opportunity to do something and then they do it. That's way better than new roads going unused, isn't it? It's a

by Kalium 8y ago

> Is this even a problem? People are given an opportunity to do something and then they do it. That's way better than new roads going unused, isn't it? It's a problem insofar as building more roads is often sold as a way to resolve traffic problems. When traffic expands to fill all available roads, this solution is an expensive way to not fix anything. There are probably more useful options, and faster ways to waste money, available to polities.

JimboOmega 8y ago
But it is making trips possible that weren't before; it's not strictly money going down the drain. I have trouble seeing a fully utilized resource as "a waste". Saying "traffic will be solved by this!" is clearly misleading. But those extra cars on the road must be benefitting, or else they wouldn't make the trip.
- Kalium 8y ago
  That's an excellent and very wise question! It's one that deserves careful study. At which point different ways of accomplishing the same goals can be compared and the best option(s) selected. I think we can agree this would be a reasonable, level-headed, approach to make informed decisions. This may be slightly different from a political cycle that spends ever-increasing amounts of resources on roads without examining if the results obtained provide a reasonable level of value for money. Or indeed address the issues that drove the construction of additional roads in the first place. Broadly, fully utilized resources are not always an ideal goal. For example, my experience is that meeting rooms in offices are almost always in constant use, no matter how many there are. This may not be the same as all uses of meeting rooms being desirable and efficient uses of the time and other resources used. I know I have been in meetings, enabled by a sizable of supply of meeting rooms, that could have been handled much faster with a handful of emails.
- ip26 8y ago
  Fully utilizing the resource means some benefit is obtained, certainly. But when the cost of the resource to the user is zero, that means the benefit only need be greater than zero. Have you ever worked on a shared compute cluster? In general, disks fill to capacity & machines run at capacity, no matter what those capacities are. It's bloat; files that don't get deleted until you run out of disk, because deleting files takes ten seconds. Massive processes that are left always-running to save ten seconds of launch time. So on and so forth. Basically, the user is getting some value. But it's very small, and thus makes a poor reason to make expensive upgrades to the cluster.
lazyjones 8y ago
> When traffic expands to fill all available roads, this solution is an expensive way to not fix anything. It always surprises me to see people actually believe this utter illogical nonsense. There's a finite amount of people and cars, so new roads satisfy existing demands but do not magically increase traffic until everybody drives 24/7 and beyond. There are plenty of roads with very little traffic. Hasn't anyone of those anti-car-activists noticed?
- baddox 8y ago
  Of course it’s true that people and cars are finite, but that doesn’t mean that new roads are satisfying existing demands. In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people commute to the city from further away.
  - lazyjones 8y ago
    > In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people commute to the city from further away. It's a theoretical concept with no basis in reality as far as traffic is concerned. Every statistic I know of shows that more people move to cities, not farther away despite new roads. What drives people to longer commutes is not new roads, but high housing prices in cities. Also, when you build useful roads, traffic there certainly increases, but somehow ideologists neglect to measure how traffic on other roads previously used for the same route decreases.
    - baddox 8y ago
      I’m not so sure about that. The Wikipedia article on induced demand has no shortage of cited studies.

by Kalium 8y ago

JimboOmega 8y ago

But it is making trips possible that weren't before; it's not strictly money going down the drain. I have trouble seeing a fully utilized resource as "a waste". Saying "traffic will be solved by this!" is clearly misleading. But those extra cars on the road must be benefitting, or else they wouldn't make the trip.

Kalium 8y ago
That's an excellent and very wise question! It's one that deserves careful study. At which point different ways of accomplishing the same goals can be compared and the best option(s) selected. I think we can agree this would be a reasonable, level-headed, approach to make informed decisions. This may be slightly different from a political cycle that spends ever-increasing amounts of resources on roads without examining if the results obtained provide a reasonable level of value for money. Or indeed address the issues that drove the construction of additional roads in the first place. Broadly, fully utilized resources are not always an ideal goal. For example, my experience is that meeting rooms in offices are almost always in constant use, no matter how many there are. This may not be the same as all uses of meeting rooms being desirable and efficient uses of the time and other resources used. I know I have been in meetings, enabled by a sizable of supply of meeting rooms, that could have been handled much faster with a handful of emails.
ip26 8y ago
Fully utilizing the resource means some benefit is obtained, certainly. But when the cost of the resource to the user is zero, that means the benefit only need be greater than zero. Have you ever worked on a shared compute cluster? In general, disks fill to capacity & machines run at capacity, no matter what those capacities are. It's bloat; files that don't get deleted until you run out of disk, because deleting files takes ten seconds. Massive processes that are left always-running to save ten seconds of launch time. So on and so forth. Basically, the user is getting some value. But it's very small, and thus makes a poor reason to make expensive upgrades to the cluster.

lazyjones 8y ago

> When traffic expands to fill all available roads, this solution is an expensive way to not fix anything. It always surprises me to see people actually believe this utter illogical nonsense. There's a finite amount of people and cars, so new roads satisfy existing demands but do not magically increase traffic until everybody drives 24/7 and beyond. There are plenty of roads with very little traffic. Hasn't anyone of those anti-car-activists noticed?

baddox 8y ago
Of course it’s true that people and cars are finite, but that doesn’t mean that new roads are satisfying existing demands. In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people commute to the city from further away.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people commute to the city from further away. It's a theoretical concept with no basis in reality as far as traffic is concerned. Every statistic I know of shows that more people move to cities, not farther away despite new roads. What drives people to longer commutes is not new roads, but high housing prices in cities. Also, when you build useful roads, traffic there certainly increases, but somehow ideologists neglect to measure how traffic on other roads previously used for the same route decreases.
  - baddox 8y ago
    I’m not so sure about that. The Wikipedia article on induced demand has no shortage of cited studies.