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It 'may' decrease carrying capacity of highways. Also, induced demand is a real observed phenomenon with roadways. The more capacity there is, the more people w
by zip1234 5y ago
It 'may' decrease carrying capacity of highways. Also, induced demand is a real observed phenomenon with roadways. The more capacity there is, the more people will drive. Paradoxically, when capacity is removed, traffic will often just dry up. Highway agencies know this but still use traffic models to justify expansion that are self-fulfilling projections.
- jcims 5y agoThis seems like an awfully simplistic first order analysis that doesn't consider the end to end economics of driving. Location is an economic constraint, and the ability to reduce or eliminate that constraint at will is very powerful. The fact that (some) traffic fills to capacity on a specific road just means there is economic demand surplus for travel between points connected by that particular route at that particular time. This demand tapers off when the roadway reaches capacity because another cost begins to grow exponentially. Travel in congested traffic quite literally causes people to murder each other. This cost, the stress of driving on congested roadways, doesn't seem to surface much because it's difficult to quantify. However, for me, it is the one thing that will cause me to change my plans. (edit: It's easy to distill 'economic' motivation into profit. That's not my intent here. My view is that there is no intrinsic value of anything, the sun could have exploded 7 minutes ago and if anyone outside of its reach is there to witness it they might catalogue it as ES0481A (in 4+ years). I use 'economic' as an encapsulation of human desire to live and to thrive and its important to me and to this argument from that perspective.)