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> Adding lanes adds demand, The demand is constant and does not change. You can only shuffle it around. You have a few choices: 1. Add lanes. This gives peopl

> Adding lanes adds demand, The demand is constant and does not change. You can only shuffle it around. You have a few choices: 1. Add lanes. This gives people the option to move to the suburbs with a long commute. 2. Build housing in urban areas. This gives people the option to live close to work without a commute. 3. Add public transportation connects the suburbs to the cities. 4. Massive homeless problem. This is because people cannot commute from the suburbs and cannot pay rent in the cities. The government has the power to add lanes at the expense of smaller, more dangerous shoulders and medians. But the ability to add lanes only extends as far as the shoulders. For the most part, California has run out of shoulder in urban areas. The government does not have the power to build housing because of NIMBYs. Buses don't solve the problem of commuting between the suburbs and the cities. If you have to sit in traffic anyway, people will sit in traffic in their car. The government doesn't have the power to build light rail because that means tearing town existing structures, and again -- NIMBYs. So massive homeless problem it is.

uoaei 5y ago
Demand is not constant. Demand fluctuates relative to amenities, jobs, goods, services available on either end of a thoroughfare. If people like the offerings in one metro area vs another, or in a suburb vs a larger city, more people travel to and from that place. If they have things they want to do in their own backyard, they do not do that. The distribution of all of those things changes over time because of course it does. Thus the law of conservation of traffic flux is violated and none of your conclusions are sound. Sure sounds like public transit design is a red herring, no? :o)
notatoad 5y ago
that demand is not a constant is the fundamental principle behind induced demand. the better a drive is, the more people will do it. "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs. the people buying houses in the suburbs are the reason the commute becomes terrible. if the drive sucks, people will find a way to avoid it, whether that's finding recreational opportunities close to home, taking transit, buying a house in the city, or finding a job close to home (or working remote)
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  > "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs. No, the reason they do it is to buy a house with three bedrooms and a yard for $225k instead of, say, paying $4000/mo for a shoebox they can never meaningfully aspire to own. The Commute is only a candidate reason they wouldn't make the move. (And if large cities had sane housing policies and lots of supply, this all might be less of a problem, but, well, that's not our world.)
  - uoaei 5y ago
    That's an incredibly strong claim considering the ease with which counterexamples can be found.
- nwallin 5y ago
  > "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs. Speaking only for myself, I didn't buy a house in the suburbs because "the commute was ok", I bought a house in the suburbs because it was the only place I was able to purchase a place to live. My rent on my 1-bedroom apartment near the city was $500 a month more than the mortgage+property taxes in the suburbs. The mortgage is constant, the house is appreciating value, some of the mortgage goes towards the principal and I "keep" that. The rent was going up 5-10% per year. The commute was not ok. But I couldn't afford not to. $500 a month is $500 a month. In the decade or so since, my house appreciated significantly in value, and I was able to purchase a house 5 minutes from work. But I could not have done that without sacrificing much of my sanity for a not-ok commute for nearly a decade. The reality is that housing and traffic are deeply, deeply entwined.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

uoaei 5y ago

Demand is not constant. Demand fluctuates relative to amenities, jobs, goods, services available on either end of a thoroughfare. If people like the offerings in one metro area vs another, or in a suburb vs a larger city, more people travel to and from that place. If they have things they want to do in their own backyard, they do not do that. The distribution of all of those things changes over time because of course it does. Thus the law of conservation of traffic flux is violated and none of your conclusions are sound. Sure sounds like public transit design is a red herring, no? :o)

notatoad 5y ago

that demand is not a constant is the fundamental principle behind induced demand. the better a drive is, the more people will do it. "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs. the people buying houses in the suburbs are the reason the commute becomes terrible. if the drive sucks, people will find a way to avoid it, whether that's finding recreational opportunities close to home, taking transit, buying a house in the city, or finding a job close to home (or working remote)

fennecfoxen 5y ago
> "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs. No, the reason they do it is to buy a house with three bedrooms and a yard for $225k instead of, say, paying $4000/mo for a shoebox they can never meaningfully aspire to own. The Commute is only a candidate reason they wouldn't make the move. (And if large cities had sane housing policies and lots of supply, this all might be less of a problem, but, well, that's not our world.)
- uoaei 5y ago
  That's an incredibly strong claim considering the ease with which counterexamples can be found.
nwallin 5y ago
> "the commute is actually okay" is the reason people buy houses in the suburbs. Speaking only for myself, I didn't buy a house in the suburbs because "the commute was ok", I bought a house in the suburbs because it was the only place I was able to purchase a place to live. My rent on my 1-bedroom apartment near the city was $500 a month more than the mortgage+property taxes in the suburbs. The mortgage is constant, the house is appreciating value, some of the mortgage goes towards the principal and I "keep" that. The rent was going up 5-10% per year. The commute was not ok. But I couldn't afford not to. $500 a month is $500 a month. In the decade or so since, my house appreciated significantly in value, and I was able to purchase a house 5 minutes from work. But I could not have done that without sacrificing much of my sanity for a not-ok commute for nearly a decade. The reality is that housing and traffic are deeply, deeply entwined.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]