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I am skeptical that all the tradeoffs are being considered here, it sounds like a recipe for permanent bad traffic justified with dubious moralizing. By the wa
by someguydave 2y ago
I am skeptical that all the tradeoffs are being considered here, it sounds like a recipe for permanent bad traffic justified with dubious moralizing.
By the way, she is the daughter of Jack Lew who was President Obama’a Chief of Staff.
- standardUser 2y agoAnd who are you the daughter of, since these facts are clearly of paramount significance?
- someguydave 2y agoSometimes people on the left are concerned about nepo babies and the outsized influence of the wealthy and powerful, sometimes people on the left are not concerned.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoBad traffic will expand to fill the road you give it (induced demand). You destroy demand instead. https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ https://www.nber.org/papers/w15376 https://www.nber.org/papers/w15376
- tonynator 2y ago[flagged]
- someguydave 2y agoYou want to hurt people by costing their time in order to teach them to desire your morals?
- toomuchtodo 2y agoPhysical systems don't care about your feelings. Live somewhere that ignores science and is financially irresponsible with infra dollars if that is your MO. We're not going to spend to build roads forever because people are ignorant and selfish, we can't even pay for the road infra we have today. And some folks are demanding more? Absolutely silly. "I'm not happy they're not building roads we cannot afford and will end up congested again, won't you think about my happiness!" Bringing morality into an economic, fluid dynamics, and behavioral argument is not helpful, and the private car entitlement (which is demonstrably unaffordable and unfunded long term) is wild. https://infrastructurereportcard.org/ https://infrastructurereportcard.org/ https://pirg.org/articles/america-cant-handle-more-highways-lets-fix-what-we-have-instead/ https://pirg.org/articles/america-cant-handle-more-highways-... https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/13/we-could-never-afford-americas-highways-even-before-covid-19 https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/13/we-could-never-afford... https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/road-funding-vehicle-miles-traveled-tax/ https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/road-funding-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/business/energy-environment/support-for-gas-tax-increase-still-nil-despite-falling-prices.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/business/energy-environme...
- fastball 2y agoWhat science is being ignored? Traffic expanding to fill capacity is not a bad thing, that is efficient use of capacity?
- kiba 2y agoThe problem with roads and highways is that they are inherently low-capacity, so it's very easy to fill them with traffic.
- ElevenLathe 2y agoFossil energy is artificially cheap (the price its consumers pay does not even begin to pay for the negative externalities of producing and burning it -- and most of it goes into private hands that don't intend to use it for any kind of mitigation anyway). This causes all kinds of problems, has all kinds of causes, and is generally a disaster all around, but at the very least we shouldn't deliberately make it worse by also artificially juicing demand in one of the main fossil-fuel-burning sectors of the economy (any more than we already are). Every petroleum-powered mile not traveled (and energy is to a certain extent fungible, so in principle this also applies to electric cars burning "free" solar energy) is a win for human civilization. This isn't hippy-dippy environmentalism, just soulless Chicago economics: mispriced commodities do real damage to a political economy, and in the globalized era, there is effectively only one political economy anymore.
- tonynator 2y ago[flagged]
- someguydave 2y agoIf the real problem is fossil fuels then leave traffic engineering out of it
- fastball 2y agoHighways can be filled with electric cars.
- ilikehurdles 2y agoThis is the philosophy by which progressives have been leading cities across the west for a few years.
- someguydave 2y agoNot just the west! You can sit in traffic on horrible roads all across the country, especially on the east coast
- kentonv 2y agoThis is quoted a lot but misunderstood. The conclusion people seem to draw from this is that widening the highway didn't help. This is wrong. 4 lanes of bad traffic travelling at 30mph is still creating twice the value of 2 lanes of bad traffic travelling at 30mph. With the 2-lane highway you were just forcing half the people to divert to other roads or to give up on their plans entirely. With 4 lanes you're serving twice the people. But if the highway is still full it implies that there is still demand for more travel. By refusing to widen the highway further you are still forcing some number of people into a worse outcome where they aren't able to exercise the travel that they wanted. I'm all for public transit alternatives (I personally love taking trains when I can), but the goal should be to make the public transit better, not to make the highways worse.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoNobody complains about induced demand when a hospital can operates on twice as many patients at a time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- light_hue_1 2y agoThat's because adding hospital capacity doesn't create more sick people. Unless your hospital goes around breaking people's kneecaps to make money. Adding highways creates more traffic by telling developers to put housing in the newly accessible land.
- mcmoor 2y agoPeople around me go less to the doctor/hospital for "small" things, mostly because of perception of how long and expensive one session can be. Sometimes it makes them neglect preventative things. More hospital would induce this demand and make people consult doctor more often.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
- rufus_foreman 2y agoThe induced demand argument is sort of crazy. It is saying you shouldn't build something because if you do, it will be extremely popular and widely used. We shouldn't build libraries - if we do, people will want to check out books. Instead, let's penalize people who read books. That will destroy the demand for books. Problem solved.
- someguydave 2y agoYep, being simply “anti-induced demand” is pro-human suffering. I agree that there could be alternatives to widening highways that will make everyone better off but I rarely see all the tradeoffs being carefully considered.
- walthamstow 2y agoYou are comparing the externalities of car driving to that of libraries
- tonynator 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DangitBobby 2y agoI actually think they are talking about induced demand.
- mc32 2y agoBad traffic is bad for industry/business. Boeing threatened to move some manufacturing out of the Seattle because they'd have parts delivery delays due to traffic from Everett to Renton. Eventually I think they moved some to SC, but not a lot because the WSDOT gave in and widened some road infra.
- adolph 2y agoThat's weird on Boeing part. The Amtrak Cascades 518 goes from Everett (Tukwila) to Renton daily. Surely Boeing should do their part, show a good example for the community and take public transportation.