I met another faulty transport planning algorithm 30 years ago. Background: my first job in the UK Civil Service was as an admin assistant (I did the filing) i

I met another faulty transport planning algorithm 30 years ago. Background: my first job in the UK Civil Service was as an admin assistant (I did the filing) in the Highways Contracts division, Dept of Transport. My team's job was to let the contracts for developing plans for new/improved national roads across England. The Algorithm: roads cost a lot of money to build; every proposed route had to demonstrate significant value for money through a cost-benefit analysis for each project, considering a number of different detailed options for the new or improved road. One of the main costs was how much money needed to be spent on buying and securing the land, and compensating the owners for loss of business, etc. In cities and towns, this favoured putting bypasses through the poorer parts of the (sub)urban environment. In more rural areas it favoured routing roads through less productive farmland. The least productive land was land that wasn't being farmed or mined. Routes put through these areas would be given an acquisition cost of £0/meter[1] ... Which is why in 1993 the Government settled on developing an improvement scheme for the A303 which put a new double-lane carriageway straight through the middle of Stonehenge. The proposal didn't go down too well. 30 years - and several administrations - later, the Government is still trying to get the proposal through planning[2] [1] - Though in fact highway lengths were still measured in 'chains' and 'links' back in the early 1990s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_(unit) [2] - Current proposal for the project: https://assets.highwaysengland.co.uk/roads/road-projects/A303+Stonehenge/Environmental+Non+Technical+Summary.pdf https://assets.highwaysengland.co.uk/roads/road-projects/A30...