5 ms·

Traffic will get worse until taking alternative means transportation is faster and then teach equilibrium. Even if you love driving, if driving takes an hour an

Traffic will get worse until taking alternative means transportation is faster and then teach equilibrium. Even if you love driving, if driving takes an hour and the train 45 minutes, most people will just take the train, until traffic speed lowers enough that a balance is reached. If there's no alternative (like in many American cities), the traffic will just continue worsening indefinitely (or at least until people give up on the area and move somewhere else that is more livable). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_parado... Obligatory Not Just Bikes video: https://youtu.be/CHZwOAIect4?si=BR9sFwxYDJSAWYLG https://youtu.be/CHZwOAIect4?si=BR9sFwxYDJSAWYLG

michaelmrose 3y ago
You can also tax cars until demand decreases. The obvious challenge is that presently people commute into the city because they can't afford to live in the city or perhaps most aptly cannot afford what they would consider a reasonable lifestyle there. Even if you phase it in you risk simply forcing people to move into the city exacerbating existing housing prices. It feels like you need a very very substantial increase in housing prior to increase in taxes. For instance in cities that have excessive single family housing bulldozing houses to build substantial apartments then phasing in taxes. The alternative is probably pretty ugly because people have a seemingly very high tolerance for bad traffic. They will keep moving to the city and keep driving until driving in the city is beyond untenable.
- ProfessorLayton 3y ago
  We could also just stop subsidizing as much as we currently do. We hand out so much public land in the form of free street parking, making the roads larger unwieldy to walk in, and bikes have to worry about getting doored. I'm not suggesting we get rid of all street parking, but it's currently at absurd levels. It would be great if some of those subsidies went to something else that lessened the need to own a car in the first place.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    You're downvoted, but it's a very reasonable point. I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on.
    - thereisnospork 3y ago
      The short answer is because public parking is in the public interest. Same as bike parking or sidewalks. Think how much space we could save if we got rid of sidewalks! (/s of course)
      - adrianN 3y ago
        You grandparent is arguing that there is a desirable level of street parking that is below current levels of street parking. They don't claim that all street parking is bad.
      - TulliusCicero 3y ago
        The difference is that car parking is an enormously larger handout. Bike parking probably takes a tenth as much space per "vehicle".
    - melagonster 3y ago
      Before car occupied road, it is possible.
    - maxsilver 3y ago
      > I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on. I mean, the traditional answer is pretty clear. Roads are public transportation infrastructure. Parking cars (and bikes and scooters) is allowed, because cars move the public around. All these other things are not transportation for the public. People think of parking spots along the streets as "landed property", but they're not, they're more like the overhead bins in a bus or plane. But also, from a practical sense, no one cares about public transportation anymore, so you actually can now park random crap in the street, anytime you'd like? At least in Michigan, restaurants routinely do the "park a picnic table with a BBQ on the side of the road" thing all the time (see https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets-in-parking-spaces/ https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets...) -- many of which still persist since COVID assistance ended. And residential/commercial construction workers routinely do get to block off street parking for a tablesaw or any other construction usage at job sites all the time.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > You can also tax cars until demand decreases. I think punishing drivers is a bad idea. It'd be much better to provide alternatives to driving that are attractive enough that people choose to use them because it actually benefits them to do so. Not many people are looking for their city to hurt them until they have no choice but to make do with things that are worse and less convenient for them. Give people a better option and they'll flock to it naturally. I've spent enough time in places with amazing public transportation that I know it can be the preferred option for 80-90% of my needs. That's what we should strive for.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    I agree. The issue with taxing drivers is it assume the driver is mostly culpable. But the infrastructure decisions that force the majority of people to commute by car weren't made by them. You got things like the big boss and his managers all like to live close to each other and close to work. So they commute 5 minutes to the office in Sunnyvale. While the secretary is commuting from Vacaville. Placing a Pigouvian tax on the secretary is kinda a jerk move.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      I suggested that housing be substantially expanded FIRST and then phase in increased taxes on cars in the city thereafter. Basically first make it possible for the secretary to have an opportunity to move close to Sunnyvale then years later if its still important to live in Vacaville they can pay increasing taxes representing the actual collective cost.
      - autoexec 3y ago
        I suspect you'll run into similar difficulties convincing people to allow their single family homes to be bulldozed and give up their privacy, their equity, and their lawns/gardens so that they can move in with strangers. If you can't offer people a housing situation that's better for them than what they have you'll not get many people signing up to make their lives worse. Try to strong arm them into it and you'll get resistance and resentment. I think we have the ability to give people better, less isolated, housing options that many would find preferable to cookie cutter houses in labyrinth-like subdivisions that cut them off from the rest of the city unless they can drive, but those options will have to minimize the downsides of living in close proximity to many others and come with additional benefits that more than make up for what you're asking people to give up.
- frankus 3y ago
  It’s worth pointing out that there are lots of ways to get people into and out of a city that don’t involve driving a private car.
- bluGill 3y ago
  > You can also tax cars until demand decreases. No you can't. If you try you will find yourself voted out of office and replaced with someone who immediately removes those taxes - and everything else you were doing to make alternatives better. If you want to make people not drive you need to start with a better option. Start building great transit. Great transit isn't possible without quantity, so build a lot of it. Make it fast and frequent. Once people have a good (not always better, but it needs to be good) we can talk about how to get the stragglers still driving out of their cars. However very few places in the world have this problem and so it isn't worth talking about.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  >You can also tax cars until demand decreases Ideas like this disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. Sure, you've reduced traffic, but now only the Right Kind Of People can afford to drive. Not a great look.
  - selectodude 3y ago
    Driving is, in fact, a luxury. Only the right kind of people can vacation in Vail and I don’t see anyone flipping out about that.
    - digging 3y ago
      Not in the vast majority of North America. It's a necessity
      - estebank 3y ago
        And the argument is that in cities, it shouldn't be.
        digging 3y ago
        I fully agree but that's 3-4 decades away if it's ever coming for most cities.
      - michaelmrose 3y ago
        The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.
        digging 3y ago
        > The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. Very clever, you sure got me. > 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car. Most definitely not. Americans living in a typical suburb have no option except to drive or walk for perhaps hours (often with no sidewalks) to get basic necessities. Even within the vast majority of US cities, typically it's a minority of neighborhoods well serviced by walkable amenities and transit, and the rest are still car-dependent. Again, walking 45+ minutes for basic errands is not a reasonable ask. Bike infrastructure is usually lacking or absent and is forbiddingly dangerous to people who aren't strong and confident bicyclists.
autoexec 3y ago
> Traffic will get worse until taking alternative means transportation is faster Alternate modes of transportation don't even have to be faster, it just can't be substantially worse. I'd gladly add an extra 10-15 to my travel time if I can spend that trip relaxing in a comfortable and well-maintained train and not have to deal with traffic, other drivers, parking, etc. People will still want cars, and in many cases still need them, but a huge percentage of our driving could be eliminated as long as public transportation was made the more attractive option.
- bluGill 3y ago
  I always tell people I want them to get rid of a car - most people live in a family situation where there is more than one driver. If there was a good transit system they could keep one car (to tow the boat or whatever it is that transit can't do), and save a large pile of money. As you say, better can mean a little slower, but not a lot slower. Creating a better transit system is expensive, but still cheaper than cars.
  - dboreham 3y ago
    > but still cheaper than cars Overall for society yes, but in most places where transit is widely used, it is quite costly. E.g. a season ticket between Reading and London is 512UKP/mo. For the individual traveler it may not be cheaper especially if they already need to own a car to go to Tesco etc.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of_British_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      Meanwhile, when I was living in Munich a few years back, an annual pass covering the whole city was like 500 EUR. For the year. That plus a bike made for great urban transportation.
waveBidder 3y ago
it almost feels like the njb video was specifically a reaction to this, the exact misunderstandings this article has are what he's responding to.
- bluGill 3y ago
  I didn't see the video (I find NJB annoying so I rarely watch his stuff), but it is a common misconception in the transit world that induced demand is a bad thing. Cities should be inducing demand for getting around. The only question is what demand - build a great transit system and you will induce demand for more transit and places to live close to transit. Have a bad transit system and you will induce demand for more roads.
  - zeendo 3y ago
    It sounds more like people use "induced demand" with negative connotations when referring to "induced driving demand" rather than truly meaning that any source of induced demand is bad. i.e. it's just a conventional shorthand?
    - bluGill 3y ago
      I have only seen induced demand used with clearly negative connotations in my life. This article (and a couple others) are the rare exception and they are only using it in context of explaining why it isn't bad (as opposed to using it in a neutral form)
      - waveBidder 3y ago
        the vast majority of urbanists are referring to induced driving demand when they bring up the topic. njb is definitely a jaded man, can see why it'd potentially be offputting.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    > Cities should be inducing demand for getting around. This is mentioned in the latest NJB video, "More Lanes are (Still) a Bad Thing": > The difference for induced demand for cars, and induced for other modes of travel, is that cars are a extremely space inefficient. You can absorb a lot more induced travel demand on a subway line, tram line, or bicycle path, than you can in a car lane. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4&t=15m54s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4&t=15m54s The Oh The Urbanity! channel has a good video on this, "What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc Cars have (AFAICT) the lowest hourly through-put of any transportation mode: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...
steveBK123 3y ago
The induced demand memes always show the crazy west coast mega highways. Meanwhile east coasters have roughly the same HOV-less, 2-3 lane highway infra in the suburbs that we had 50 years ago when the population in some areas was 1/2 of what it is today. Worse yet, we also have roughly the same transit infra we did then too. You can tax cars/roads, you can make trains free, but at the end of the day.. you need to build SOMETHING. If you want your economy to grow as your population grows, you need to grow your infra. It's a sorry state in the NYC metro area because we are not. You can't just keep slicing up the existing infra pie differently, you need to grow the pie. Otherwise you are just reallocating winners & losers, and unlikely to make the overall situation any better. Thinking we will simply increase the pain of driving until the existing state of trains is tolerable is idiotic, but I see plenty of this in the alt-transit movement. Make trains great, make them awesome, make me want to take them.. make me regret having to drive when I do!!
- eppp 3y ago
  We don't NEED to build something. Maybe NYC is big enough and people need to consider going elsewhere with better policies. We need to stop this narrative that growth must continue indefinitely.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Those people don't cease to exist if they're not in NYC, you realize? If they're not there, they're probably somewhere more sprawly, that uses more energy and cuts more space out of the environment.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      This guy gets it
      - TulliusCicero 3y ago
        A lot of NIMBYs seem to lack object permanence. If dastardly "newcomers" have to move elsewhere, they chalk that up as a victory for degrowth, as if those people poof out of existence as soon as they leave the metro area.
jakderrida 3y ago
> the traffic will just continue worsening indefinitely (or at least until people give up on the area and move somewhere else that is more livable). While it's incredibly hard to believe, it is true. If you look at population statistics for Philadelphia up to the 1980s, it fell to 4/5ths its peak in less than a couple decades. Driving from river-to-river, or from city-to-suburbs or vice versa was a nightmare, according to everyone older than me. Driving "through" or "to" the center city's impassable traffic grid was hopeless. Then, in 1984, they took advantage of the government buying all the bankrupt railroads and used that property to create a below-ground highway Vine-Street Expressway for river-to-river traffic and connected Penn Railroads Center-city terminal with Reading's system through an underground commuter tunnel and turned Reading's terminal into the Convention Center instead of a giant mess off railroad track interlockings leading into Reading Terminal making traffic even worse. If not for that, I have no doubt it would be 3/5ths the peak population. I could write a 50-page paper on all the things it fixed and I was only 2 when it was all built.

michaelmrose 3y ago

You can also tax cars until demand decreases. The obvious challenge is that presently people commute into the city because they can't afford to live in the city or perhaps most aptly cannot afford what they would consider a reasonable lifestyle there. Even if you phase it in you risk simply forcing people to move into the city exacerbating existing housing prices. It feels like you need a very very substantial increase in housing prior to increase in taxes. For instance in cities that have excessive single family housing bulldozing houses to build substantial apartments then phasing in taxes. The alternative is probably pretty ugly because people have a seemingly very high tolerance for bad traffic. They will keep moving to the city and keep driving until driving in the city is beyond untenable.

ProfessorLayton 3y ago
We could also just stop subsidizing as much as we currently do. We hand out so much public land in the form of free street parking, making the roads larger unwieldy to walk in, and bikes have to worry about getting doored. I'm not suggesting we get rid of all street parking, but it's currently at absurd levels. It would be great if some of those subsidies went to something else that lessened the need to own a car in the first place.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  You're downvoted, but it's a very reasonable point. I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on.
  - thereisnospork 3y ago
    The short answer is because public parking is in the public interest. Same as bike parking or sidewalks. Think how much space we could save if we got rid of sidewalks! (/s of course)
    - adrianN 3y ago
      You grandparent is arguing that there is a desirable level of street parking that is below current levels of street parking. They don't claim that all street parking is bad.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      The difference is that car parking is an enormously larger handout. Bike parking probably takes a tenth as much space per "vehicle".
  - melagonster 3y ago
    Before car occupied road, it is possible.
  - maxsilver 3y ago
    > I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on. I mean, the traditional answer is pretty clear. Roads are public transportation infrastructure. Parking cars (and bikes and scooters) is allowed, because cars move the public around. All these other things are not transportation for the public. People think of parking spots along the streets as "landed property", but they're not, they're more like the overhead bins in a bus or plane. But also, from a practical sense, no one cares about public transportation anymore, so you actually can now park random crap in the street, anytime you'd like? At least in Michigan, restaurants routinely do the "park a picnic table with a BBQ on the side of the road" thing all the time (see https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets-in-parking-spaces/ https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets...) -- many of which still persist since COVID assistance ended. And residential/commercial construction workers routinely do get to block off street parking for a tablesaw or any other construction usage at job sites all the time.
autoexec 3y ago
> You can also tax cars until demand decreases. I think punishing drivers is a bad idea. It'd be much better to provide alternatives to driving that are attractive enough that people choose to use them because it actually benefits them to do so. Not many people are looking for their city to hurt them until they have no choice but to make do with things that are worse and less convenient for them. Give people a better option and they'll flock to it naturally. I've spent enough time in places with amazing public transportation that I know it can be the preferred option for 80-90% of my needs. That's what we should strive for.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  I agree. The issue with taxing drivers is it assume the driver is mostly culpable. But the infrastructure decisions that force the majority of people to commute by car weren't made by them. You got things like the big boss and his managers all like to live close to each other and close to work. So they commute 5 minutes to the office in Sunnyvale. While the secretary is commuting from Vacaville. Placing a Pigouvian tax on the secretary is kinda a jerk move.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    I suggested that housing be substantially expanded FIRST and then phase in increased taxes on cars in the city thereafter. Basically first make it possible for the secretary to have an opportunity to move close to Sunnyvale then years later if its still important to live in Vacaville they can pay increasing taxes representing the actual collective cost.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      I suspect you'll run into similar difficulties convincing people to allow their single family homes to be bulldozed and give up their privacy, their equity, and their lawns/gardens so that they can move in with strangers. If you can't offer people a housing situation that's better for them than what they have you'll not get many people signing up to make their lives worse. Try to strong arm them into it and you'll get resistance and resentment. I think we have the ability to give people better, less isolated, housing options that many would find preferable to cookie cutter houses in labyrinth-like subdivisions that cut them off from the rest of the city unless they can drive, but those options will have to minimize the downsides of living in close proximity to many others and come with additional benefits that more than make up for what you're asking people to give up.
frankus 3y ago
It’s worth pointing out that there are lots of ways to get people into and out of a city that don’t involve driving a private car.
bluGill 3y ago
> You can also tax cars until demand decreases. No you can't. If you try you will find yourself voted out of office and replaced with someone who immediately removes those taxes - and everything else you were doing to make alternatives better. If you want to make people not drive you need to start with a better option. Start building great transit. Great transit isn't possible without quantity, so build a lot of it. Make it fast and frequent. Once people have a good (not always better, but it needs to be good) we can talk about how to get the stragglers still driving out of their cars. However very few places in the world have this problem and so it isn't worth talking about.
calamari4065 3y ago
>You can also tax cars until demand decreases Ideas like this disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. Sure, you've reduced traffic, but now only the Right Kind Of People can afford to drive. Not a great look.
- selectodude 3y ago
  Driving is, in fact, a luxury. Only the right kind of people can vacation in Vail and I don’t see anyone flipping out about that.
  - digging 3y ago
    Not in the vast majority of North America. It's a necessity
    - estebank 3y ago
      And the argument is that in cities, it shouldn't be.
      - digging 3y ago
        I fully agree but that's 3-4 decades away if it's ever coming for most cities.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.
      - digging 3y ago
        > The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. Very clever, you sure got me. > 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car. Most definitely not. Americans living in a typical suburb have no option except to drive or walk for perhaps hours (often with no sidewalks) to get basic necessities. Even within the vast majority of US cities, typically it's a minority of neighborhoods well serviced by walkable amenities and transit, and the rest are still car-dependent. Again, walking 45+ minutes for basic errands is not a reasonable ask. Bike infrastructure is usually lacking or absent and is forbiddingly dangerous to people who aren't strong and confident bicyclists.

autoexec 3y ago

> Traffic will get worse until taking alternative means transportation is faster Alternate modes of transportation don't even have to be faster, it just can't be substantially worse. I'd gladly add an extra 10-15 to my travel time if I can spend that trip relaxing in a comfortable and well-maintained train and not have to deal with traffic, other drivers, parking, etc. People will still want cars, and in many cases still need them, but a huge percentage of our driving could be eliminated as long as public transportation was made the more attractive option.

bluGill 3y ago
I always tell people I want them to get rid of a car - most people live in a family situation where there is more than one driver. If there was a good transit system they could keep one car (to tow the boat or whatever it is that transit can't do), and save a large pile of money. As you say, better can mean a little slower, but not a lot slower. Creating a better transit system is expensive, but still cheaper than cars.
- dboreham 3y ago
  > but still cheaper than cars Overall for society yes, but in most places where transit is widely used, it is quite costly. E.g. a season ticket between Reading and London is 512UKP/mo. For the individual traveler it may not be cheaper especially if they already need to own a car to go to Tesco etc.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of_British_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Meanwhile, when I was living in Munich a few years back, an annual pass covering the whole city was like 500 EUR. For the year. That plus a bike made for great urban transportation.

waveBidder 3y ago

it almost feels like the njb video was specifically a reaction to this, the exact misunderstandings this article has are what he's responding to.

bluGill 3y ago
I didn't see the video (I find NJB annoying so I rarely watch his stuff), but it is a common misconception in the transit world that induced demand is a bad thing. Cities should be inducing demand for getting around. The only question is what demand - build a great transit system and you will induce demand for more transit and places to live close to transit. Have a bad transit system and you will induce demand for more roads.
- zeendo 3y ago
  It sounds more like people use "induced demand" with negative connotations when referring to "induced driving demand" rather than truly meaning that any source of induced demand is bad. i.e. it's just a conventional shorthand?
  - bluGill 3y ago
    I have only seen induced demand used with clearly negative connotations in my life. This article (and a couple others) are the rare exception and they are only using it in context of explaining why it isn't bad (as opposed to using it in a neutral form)
    - waveBidder 3y ago
      the vast majority of urbanists are referring to induced driving demand when they bring up the topic. njb is definitely a jaded man, can see why it'd potentially be offputting.
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > Cities should be inducing demand for getting around. This is mentioned in the latest NJB video, "More Lanes are (Still) a Bad Thing": > The difference for induced demand for cars, and induced for other modes of travel, is that cars are a extremely space inefficient. You can absorb a lot more induced travel demand on a subway line, tram line, or bicycle path, than you can in a car lane. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4&t=15m54s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4&t=15m54s The Oh The Urbanity! channel has a good video on this, "What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand": * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc Cars have (AFAICT) the lowest hourly through-put of any transportation mode: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

steveBK123 3y ago

The induced demand memes always show the crazy west coast mega highways. Meanwhile east coasters have roughly the same HOV-less, 2-3 lane highway infra in the suburbs that we had 50 years ago when the population in some areas was 1/2 of what it is today. Worse yet, we also have roughly the same transit infra we did then too. You can tax cars/roads, you can make trains free, but at the end of the day.. you need to build SOMETHING. If you want your economy to grow as your population grows, you need to grow your infra. It's a sorry state in the NYC metro area because we are not. You can't just keep slicing up the existing infra pie differently, you need to grow the pie. Otherwise you are just reallocating winners & losers, and unlikely to make the overall situation any better. Thinking we will simply increase the pain of driving until the existing state of trains is tolerable is idiotic, but I see plenty of this in the alt-transit movement. Make trains great, make them awesome, make me want to take them.. make me regret having to drive when I do!!

eppp 3y ago
We don't NEED to build something. Maybe NYC is big enough and people need to consider going elsewhere with better policies. We need to stop this narrative that growth must continue indefinitely.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Those people don't cease to exist if they're not in NYC, you realize? If they're not there, they're probably somewhere more sprawly, that uses more energy and cuts more space out of the environment.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    This guy gets it
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      A lot of NIMBYs seem to lack object permanence. If dastardly "newcomers" have to move elsewhere, they chalk that up as a victory for degrowth, as if those people poof out of existence as soon as they leave the metro area.

jakderrida 3y ago

> the traffic will just continue worsening indefinitely (or at least until people give up on the area and move somewhere else that is more livable). While it's incredibly hard to believe, it is true. If you look at population statistics for Philadelphia up to the 1980s, it fell to 4/5ths its peak in less than a couple decades. Driving from river-to-river, or from city-to-suburbs or vice versa was a nightmare, according to everyone older than me. Driving "through" or "to" the center city's impassable traffic grid was hopeless. Then, in 1984, they took advantage of the government buying all the bankrupt railroads and used that property to create a below-ground highway Vine-Street Expressway for river-to-river traffic and connected Penn Railroads Center-city terminal with Reading's system through an underground commuter tunnel and turned Reading's terminal into the Convention Center instead of a giant mess off railroad track interlockings leading into Reading Terminal making traffic even worse. If not for that, I have no doubt it would be 3/5ths the peak population. I could write a 50-page paper on all the things it fixed and I was only 2 when it was all built.