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When has building more roads for cars ever resulted in fixing traffic. The solution isn't to try and make the city more car friendly, it's to remove the cars en
by Pfhreak 7y ago
When has building more roads for cars ever resulted in fixing traffic. The solution isn't to try and make the city more car friendly, it's to remove the cars entirely. Move to streetcars, subways, trains, busses, anything that moves crowds of people rather than 1-5 people.
Cars are such an incredibly inefficient model for moving people around in dense areas -- every person gets their own engine, several chairs, storage areas, and a couple tons of metal?
> If you want to reduce traffic in large cities, without restricting car ownership.
You don't have to restrict car ownership to make people stop owning cars. Just make the alternative much better -- why would I need to own a car if public transit served my every need and I could take a zipcar/car2go/taxi for those rare, rare cases when I needed my own vehicle?
- rocqua 7y agoInduced demand means that more roads won't fix traffic. It will however, mean more people get to travel. There is real value in that.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoLatent demand does exist (not "induced", it was always there!) but it isn't infinite. There's a point where you could actually have enough supply. They just don't want to spend that much money and knock down that many buildings (give up Manhattan's density), so they say it wouldn't work.
- maccam94 7y agoDemand is only limited by travel time. The amount of traffic will rise to the maximum amount of time people are willing to endure reaching their destination.
- devit 7y agoIt's also limited by the number of people that want to pass through that road per unit of time.
- adrianN 7y agoSure, if you replace everything that makes people want to go to a place with more roads, then eventually supply will match demand.
- speedplane 7y ago> why would I need to own a car if public transit served my every need and I could take a zipcar/car2go/taxi for those rare, rare cases when I needed my own vehicle? Many kids growing up in NYC rarely get to leave the city. They don't get to go upstate, see real nature and open spaces, go camping, hike a big mountain, swim in a natural lake, or experience the things that a large city cannot offer. Many never get a drivers license, rendering them immobile outside a major city, locking them in place. For families in NYC that do not own a car, the only way to access these experiences is by renting a vehicle. Yet, New York charges a 20% tax on rental cars, and another 20% tax on paid parking spots, driving up the cost of renting a car to over $120/day, out of reach for many families that want to escape the city for a day or experience nature. If NYC really cared about reducing inequality, and providing families access to experiences that everyone should be able to enjoy, they would eliminate these taxes and make car rentals/shares easier and far less expensive.
- lukas099 7y agoIsn't the other alternative for those families to own a car? That's surely more expensive than renting one to go camping.
- speedplane 7y ago> Isn't the other alternative for those families to own a car? That's surely more expensive than renting one to go camping. No. In many places, you can own and maintain a used car for as little as $200/month. In NYC, renting a car leaving friday at 5PM and coming back Sunday at 10PM will cost you about $400.
- geofft 7y agoCan't you take Metro-North for a bit and then rent a car outside NYC (and its surcharges and taxes)? Is it really faster to drive a rental car from NYC than to take a train out, especially on a Friday evening? Also, one reasonable approach to this particular problem is to permit cars on West Side Highway and FDR Drive but not otherwise in Manhattan. You can go around the city core but not through it.