3 ms·

What happens in the case of commutes, school, and so forth is that people choose where to live based on the cost of suffering in traffic, thus determining what

by ip26 7y ago

What happens in the case of commutes, school, and so forth is that people choose where to live based on the cost of suffering in traffic, thus determining what trips will happen. So in net, because traffic is bad, "commutes from <exurb> sixty miles away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <suburb> ten miles away" happen. Then if you improve congestion, people move to <exurb>, creating trips from <exurb>. Thus it would be an example of a trip that was of low economic value.

nitrogen 7y ago
You could also look at it another way. Consider metropolitan areas as a sort of economic watershed, where the city receives workers and money from the surrounding areas. Improving transportation throughput and latency expands a city's economic area to more people at greater distances.
gamblor956 7y ago
People choose to live based on where they can afford to live. Traffic is a secondary concern, and plenty of people commute from 60 miles away because that's the closest they can afford to rent/buy a place to live, despite the horrible commute that comes with it.
burfog 7y ago
You'd think so, but this is where we hit problems: zoning, real estate transaction cost, 2-income households, property tax rates that reset if you move... Fixing those problems would fix the traffic problems.
runako 7y ago
> because traffic is bad, "commutes from <exurb> sixty miles away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <suburb> ten miles away" happen. On the topic of traffic cost in congested areas, distance is only loosely related to travel times. If we reword using 1 mile = 1.5 minute > because traffic is bad, "commutes from <location> ninety minutes away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <location> fifteen minutes away" happen. This is obviously false for congested metro areas. As another commenter notes, people live where they can afford to do so. Bringing it back to schools etc. For excellent teachers, it may be lower economic value for them to live in a congested area versus one where they can live closer to school. But the metro area lost an excellent teacher, presumably in favor of one with fewer other employment options. Congestion, like air quality, is a tax on every activity. It's not useful to only model it at the individual trip level.
- ip26 7y ago
  Then the metro should have paid the teacher more to make those congested commutes worth it. And, there is definitely a distribution of commute times. Some very long. But your average commute is not two hours one way; the center of the distribution normalizes around some level of bearability, around 50 minutes in the US. Which, with bad congestion, might allow you to go 10 miles. But with no congestion, might allow you to go 60. The reason I quoted distance is because commute times are relatively stable, the product of travel speed (congestion) times distance. And that's the point; if travel speed is increased, many people will choose to live further away, e.g. for a bigger house.

by ip26 7y ago

nitrogen 7y ago

You could also look at it another way. Consider metropolitan areas as a sort of economic watershed, where the city receives workers and money from the surrounding areas. Improving transportation throughput and latency expands a city's economic area to more people at greater distances.

gamblor956 7y ago

People choose to live based on where they can afford to live. Traffic is a secondary concern, and plenty of people commute from 60 miles away because that's the closest they can afford to rent/buy a place to live, despite the horrible commute that comes with it.

burfog 7y ago

You'd think so, but this is where we hit problems: zoning, real estate transaction cost, 2-income households, property tax rates that reset if you move... Fixing those problems would fix the traffic problems.

runako 7y ago

> because traffic is bad, "commutes from <exurb> sixty miles away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <suburb> ten miles away" happen. On the topic of traffic cost in congested areas, distance is only loosely related to travel times. If we reword using 1 mile = 1.5 minute > because traffic is bad, "commutes from <location> ninety minutes away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <location> fifteen minutes away" happen. This is obviously false for congested metro areas. As another commenter notes, people live where they can afford to do so. Bringing it back to schools etc. For excellent teachers, it may be lower economic value for them to live in a congested area versus one where they can live closer to school. But the metro area lost an excellent teacher, presumably in favor of one with fewer other employment options. Congestion, like air quality, is a tax on every activity. It's not useful to only model it at the individual trip level.

ip26 7y ago
Then the metro should have paid the teacher more to make those congested commutes worth it. And, there is definitely a distribution of commute times. Some very long. But your average commute is not two hours one way; the center of the distribution normalizes around some level of bearability, around 50 minutes in the US. Which, with bad congestion, might allow you to go 10 miles. But with no congestion, might allow you to go 60. The reason I quoted distance is because commute times are relatively stable, the product of travel speed (congestion) times distance. And that's the point; if travel speed is increased, many people will choose to live further away, e.g. for a bigger house.