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> 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 believ
by 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 agoOf 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 agoI’m not so sure about that. The Wikipedia article on induced demand has no shortage of cited studies.