
Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015) - jseliger
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/23/6994159/traffic-roads-induced-demand
======
netcan
In practical terms, we can consume as much transport as we get. If it was
cheap and fast I could have ramen lunch in Tokyo. Pick up the kids from crèche
in Portugal on my way home to New Zealand.

So, unless we get teleport watches... congestion is the "price," the thing
that limits consumption. Economists would prefer the price to be price, being
economists.

One thing this article leaves out is what the value of all this transport is.
Maybe more roads don't solve congestion but they do produce more "goods," more
Kms travelled. Presumably this has value.

~~~
magduf
If I could teleport around like that instantly, I'd be acting like that too.

However, real-world transport has a real cost: time (in addition to money for
fuel/maintenance/insurance/etc.). If teleporting was cheap but took 3 hours
for every trip, I'm not going to be having any kind of lunch in Tokyo unless
I'm living there.

The weird thing is how much time Americans are willing to waste on a commute.
So many of them think nothing of spending 1-2 hours in traffic, each way,
every workday, just so they can have some big McMansion in the exurbs with a
giant lawn they have to spend hours maintaining every weekend.

>Maybe more roads don't solve congestion but they do produce more "goods,"
more Kms travelled. Presumably this has value.

When people don't do anything with all those kms traveled than move farther
out of the metro area and extend their commute, no, I don't really see the
value to society there. Rather, I see that it has a real _cost_ to society for
people to waste their time and money on these things, rather than things that
provide positive economic value to the society at large. Don't forget that
more miles driven means more accidents, more traffic deaths and maimings,
etc., all of which cost society. Plus all the pollution produced.

~~~
closeparen
>just so they can have some big McMansion in the exurbs with a giant lawn they
have to spend hours maintaining every weekend.

What other options provide good public schools, homes that are pleasant to be
inside, and a clean/safe/well-functioning environment?

I hate sprawl and fast-casual architecture as much as the next guy, but it is
the only thing that can grow at scale under our economic and political
reality. Alternatives only exist because they were created in a different era,
under different constraints. Their supply is fixed and dwindling. So of
_course_ we are going to see a large and growing segment of the population in
the only kind of housing it's both legal and profitable to build.

Also, by the way, the median driving commute is closer to 25 minutes.
Commuting 1-2 hours each way is something transit riders do; for drivers it's
very rare.

~~~
phil248
"What other options provide good public schools, homes that are pleasant to be
inside, and a clean/safe/well-functioning environment?"

Cities at one time were far superior to non-cities in precisely those ways. It
is not an inherent flaw of cities, just a problem with how we manage American
cities.

~~~
closeparen
Regular people deciding where to live is at _most_ a very small input into how
we manage American cities.

------
JimboOmega
Is this even a problem? People are given an opportunity to do something and
then they do it. That's way better than new roads going unused, isn't it?

I like congestion charging alright, which the article advocates at the very
end, but it has a habit of being regressive - it's easy for me, as a software
engineer, to show up at work at 11AM, but that might not be the case for those
who can less afford to pay those charges. I think it's a net positive, but it
can have consequences - especially in places like the Bay Area where there is
no vaguely affordable housing anywhere near where the jobs are.

Why not think about locating things people want to go to - especially their
jobs - near where they live? Why do we need sprawling suburban "campuses" and
a million tech busses to shuttle people from the cities to them? Throwing up
huge office buildings and tech HQs in SF - but refusing to build housing the
same way - is only a little tiny bit better.

Both just force people to the exurbs, creates more super commuters and more
demand on the roads.

~~~
Simon_says
> it's easy for me, as a software engineer, to show up at work at 11AM

That's the point -- we should incentivize people who can time shift to do so
thereby alleviating traffic for those who can't.

~~~
JimboOmega
People feel that incentive very differently. If the 101 is a $5 toll road
during rush hour it barely changes my habits. In fact, it might actually
encourage me to go in earlier because I expect traffic to be better. The cost
of time spent in traffic already outweighs any congestion charge - _for me_.

There are, however, a lot of people for whom that $50 more in weekly commute
costs, would be financially deadly and almost unavoidable.

It's easy for me to advocate for congestion charges; they clearly benefit me.
Those who make a lot less than I do might feel very differently.

~~~
AlexB138
Well, maybe there is a lesson in that. We have to think about what the
benefits of each person commuting is. Does it make sense to fill up highways
with people going to work in e.g. fast food restaurants?

If the McDonalds employee has to pay $50 in fees to get to their job, it
changes their financial calculations around whether that is a viable job. If
enough of them decide to quit because of this, the restaurant will need to pay
its employees more, subsidize their commutes or shut down.

If the restaurant shuts down, then it didn't make sense for them to be in an
expensive urban hub, and the negative externality of the traffic their
employees generated is gone. I suspect a lot of only-barely-viable jobs would
go this way, and that's where traffic reduction would come from.

If they pay more, or subsidize commutes, they are paying to paying for the
negative externality of filling up the highways to bring their employees in.
The people who want cheap cheeseburgers in an expensive urban hub will decide
if they want to pay more for cheap cheeseburgers to cover the cost. If they
don't, it doesn't make sense for it to be there and the traffic isn't worth
it.

------
honkycat
If you are sitting there thinking: "So what", I highly recommend you educate
yourself on how building roads actually affects US infrastructure.

We have a CRUMBLING infrastructure in the US, and people are constantly
complaining about potholes in major metropolitan areas. And the solution is
build more roads? We cannot even maintain the ones we have!

Recommended reading:

\- [https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-
scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme)

\- [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/16/why-
walkable-s...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/16/why-walkable-
streets-are-more-economically-productive-3bzg5)

~~~
closeparen
Counterpoint: I grew up in an area which allegedly has some of the worst roads
in the country. They're _fine_. Sure they're not silky-smooth surfaces ready
for MotoGP but contemporary mass-market vehicles have no problem traversing
them. At worst you're going to feel uncomfortable for half a second. Really
bad construction might slow you down 10-20 minutes.

Meanwhile America's best, most expensive, most politically supported public
transit systems barely work, and can be expected to fail you _completely_
several times each month.

The lived experiences don't match the theory. Roads usually work fine, and
degrade gracefully when they don't. Transit is obnoxious on a good day, and
when it fails it cascades catastrophically.

I want to be a good urbanist, but the quality just isn't there, nor does it
seem to be a budget priority (instead new money goes to fare subsidies, empty
bus routes, etc).

~~~
sethherr
My lived experience is that public transit is great. I take BART 5 days a week
and have a 15 minute late experience once every few months.

This to me is something like the “I can’t live in a city because I can’t
afford a 2000 square foot detached unit” issue.

You just need to modify your expectations. I’m far happier and less stressed
not driving every day - but yes, it’s noisy and I have to stand and sometimes
something smells bad.

There’s room for improvement, but that doesn’t mean public transit is
unuseable.

~~~
closeparen
The "suck it up" school of user experience design is poorly adapted to a
competitive marketplace. There is no supreme authority who gets to say "you
just need to modify your expectations." There are only consumers and voters.

------
TuringNYC
The more intelligent approach to building roads is one i've seen in Washington
DC. While the metro system isnt perfect, they allocated a portion of the
highway to rail (middle track between both directions on the highway.) This
way, the community expanded outwards via longer and longer highways and there
was an obvious way to eventually simultaneously also expand the metro system
outwards.

They did this with the Orange Line westwards inbetween Route 66. They then did
this with the Silver Line North-westwards in-between Route the Dulles tollway.

I imagine the increased traffic due to increased highway capacity is partly
because exurbs dont have mass transit support back to the center city...yet
people reach further outwards to exurbs seeking more affordable housing. The
Washington DC approach solves parts of that problem quite well.

~~~
tafda
Transit works better if it is where people are going rather than where it is
convenient to build - for example, downtown Falls Church VA instead of the
freeway median. Building densely around the stations can drive ridership. See:
Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore. Of course, building in more congested areas is
more expensive.

Freeway median transit is no panacea (though better than nothing).

~~~
TuringNYC
Well the idea is that the major highways are a good indicator of where people
are going. If you build a major high way, and then widen it, chances are good
its where people want to travel along.

With respect to getting to downtown Falls Church VA, that is more a last mile
problem. One I dont want to dismiss, but not something a _commuter rail_ can
solve. The commuter rail does pretty well at getting people to several major
job districts (DC, Tyson's Corner)

Building commuter rail along highway medians solves a different problem -- the
NYC problem where a city fiddles around for 40yrs figuring out where to dig a
tunnel and eminent domain problems.

~~~
marcosdumay
Large roads are a good indicator of places everybody _goes through_.

People rarely want to go there. Some are built so traffic is moved from where
people actually want to go into some place that is not too far (by car) but
will not disturb the destination; others are built at the end of a set of
smaller roads, linking to a different set at the other end.

------
whoisnnamdi
This is an important point that is commonly overlooked.

Traffic is a sign of something. It’s a sign that the benefits of
transportation outweighs the costs of transportation. Given this, high traffic
often implies that there is pent up demand out there - more cars that would be
on the road right now if only the roads could support it.

When more roads are built, this unlocks some of the pent up demand, as the
cost of transportation has effectively declined due to more available roads.

However, this reduction in cost / hassle etc and the previously pent up demand
may be so large that in encourages much more driving, such that in equilibrium
the traffic could be nearly as bad as before.

~~~
ip26
_It’s a sign that the benefits of transportation outweighs the costs of
transportation_

Which, given the way roads are funded, is something of a broken equation. The
costs of transportation are not fully borne by the user proportionally to
consumption.

You pay fuel taxes & buy tires, yes, but they by no means cover the full per-
mile cost of your trip.

~~~
megablast
Not sure why you are downvoted, drivers are subsidised to a huge amount, and
that doesn't even include pollution, deaths, destruction of wildlife, etc...

------
40acres
Why are roads an elastic demand but it seems that other transportation
methods, like light rail, aren't? I've seen cases of quite a few expensive
lines and rail-stops that have lower than expected utilization, but it seems
like new highway roads and lanes get immediate use. Is it down to the fact
that there is simply more "freedom" with regards to roads over rail?

~~~
yason
Elastic demand requires free-flowing masses. I'm quite sure New Yorkers or
Londoners would be able to fill as many new subway trains during the rush hour
as you could humanly add to the rail network, at least on the sections that
are most commonly shared between lines to different destinations.

On the other hand, if the on-ramp of a highway would only let cars through for
one minute every 10 minutes (which would be considered a good service interval
for any suburban public transit), the demand for roadspace would likely be a
bit less elastic. Ditto, if the highway would only go to a set of destinations
with no connections.

Motorists can embark on a trip any time, join the highway any time, and take
any exit, and continue from there to local destinations. This free schedule
suits way more people than fixed departures to fixed destinations using public
transit.

Only in a densely built city you can achieve the same: people sharing segments
of public transit before diverging to a number of different destinations.

------
paulsutter
It's called "elastic demand" and it just means that roads are useful. The
Boring Company has a twofold solution (a) charge for usage, and (b) build to
30 levels or more to meet demand

~~~
fabioborellini
In the Old World we have public mass transit. One vehicle can transport a
thousand commuters, and it does not need to be stored in the most desired area
of the city for the duration of a working day.

Sometimes it looks like the Silicon Valley is trying to solve transit problems
either against the laws of physics and economics or, alternatively, ignoring
solutions that were there already in the 1800s.

~~~
fgheorghe
In the “old world” cities like London, Paris, Berlin and others are facing the
eact same problems, with or without those overcrowded, overpriced buses you
mentioned.

~~~
lmm
I live in London. Many people don't own cars. Many who moved here with a car
give up their cars. Working public transport systems leave everyone better
off.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Public transport in London is incredibly good, I'm always amazed. But then
it's NOT run by 5 competing companies that couldn't care less about linked up
journeys.

~~~
twblalock
On the other hand, transit in Tokyo and Osaka is run by a number of public and
private companies, some of which compete with each other, and linked-up
journeys are no problem at all. It's totally doable.

~~~
lmm
Japanese companies do not have much of a reputation for red-in-tooth-and-claw
competition (e.g. the "gentleman's agreement" about advertised car
horsepower).

------
komali2
I'm visiting my hometown of Houston after now having lived in SF for just
under 3 years, and my partner and mine most common debate thread as we sit in
Houston traffic is - what did Houston do differently, to get these uniquely
Houston traffic problems? Is it "Houston's" fault, or the fact that it has an
extra 2 million people? Does it _actually_ have 2 million more people, or did
it just octopus across the entire region to a ridiculous point and thus
inflate its population numbers (really, does Clear Lake count as "Houston?"
parts are nearly 20 miles away, and can take an hour or even two to get to on
a straight shot freeway).

Here's some questions we argue:

1\. Where's the money coming from? We see massive Houston mega-projects, huge
new freeways built on top of massive existent ones. Yet there's no gas tax, no
state income tax, and I don't remember there even being a city income tax
(that was several years ago that I worked here though). So who's paying for
the new freeways?

2\. Why do cars clump at exits? Why do Houstonians sometimes spend 15+minutes
at a total standstill waiting to exit? Is it because of line cutters (culture
of driving)? Is it because of people reacting violently to line cutters
(culture of driving)? Is it because of poor design? Is it as the Houston
Chronicle has argued and due to feeder roads, a feature that doesn't exist
outside of Houston/Dallas (and thus is a strong contender)? Is it simply
because the population is massive and driving is the only viable option to get
around, and thus the roads are always clogged? Is it actually an issue in San
Francisco, and we simply don't notice because we drive motorcycles (unlikely,
but I will pay extra attention when we return)?

3\. Why the _fuck_ did i-45, in the middle of a 50 year construction project,
suddenly swap out freeway-going-under-bridge design in the Clear Lake area for
freeway-is-a-bridge design? Now it's terrifying to drive the speed limit over
those bridges because you might smash at 65mph into a half-mile exit-clump
line.

~~~
mklingen
> Where's the money coming from?

The federal highway program. Highways are heavily, heavily subsidized by state
and federal dollars. That's why their true cost isn't born on drivers, and
it's something that greatly exacerbates the problem of urban planning the U.S
that leads to vast sprawl, urban decay, hell for walkers/bikers and
environmental degredation. If all highways were toll roads, most would cease
to exist and our cities would become denser, doubly so if all those highway
dollars were diverted to public transit.

~~~
kodablah
> Highways are heavily, heavily subsidized by state and federal dollars.
> That's why their true cost isn't born on drivers

These aren't contradictory if you look where most of those state and federal
dollars come from (i.e. fuel taxes, which is borne by the driver). Mass
transit more fits the description of transportation subsidized by non-users.

------
makewavesnotwar
Eh... There was a toll lane added from just outside Boulder part way to
Denver. This has not generated more traffic, but it has generally speed up the
road (sometimes to an undesirable extent as faster moving vehicles make more
noise).

They didn't change the two lane in each direction structure, they just added
another lane on each side which can only be entered/exited around exits.

A couple things I've noticed, most mid-day traffic occurs in clumps. You can
usually take one segment of toll road for $0.35 and exit back into a mostly
empty highway. Also, the toll lane people usually move above the speed limit.
This speeds up traffic in general because people seem to tend to move into the
right lane when someone blasts past them. A few people do it and most slow
drivers will get the idea. And it also discourages lane switching which is a
significant contributor to traffic. Once you're in the toll lane, you're
committed to it until the next exit.

The problem with just arbitrarily adding more lanes is than lane switching is
a major cause of traffic. Every time someone switches a lane because their
lane is too slow, they usually cause the car behind them to have to slow down
which causes a ripple effect. Add this to complexity of an 8 lane freeway and
you may have created a nightmare for travelers. Granted in over populated
areas like much of CA, congestion is somewhat unavoidable. (I grew up in the
LA area)

------
casual_slacker
Here is the paper the article attempted to cite [1] (article link is 404ing
right now)

[1]
[https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=108...](https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1087&context=real-
estate_papers)

I believe the article mentions this, but the paper only studies urban-area
VKT, the paper mentions that the same effects do not apply to interstate
highway system or a number of other categories.

------
BurningFrog
Here is the BIG elephant on the road. Why road consumption is different than
all other consumptions:

We don't pay for road usage!!!

Anything useful that is handed out to consumers at the cost of _$0.00_ will be
overused and develop a shortage.

This is so ingrained that it can be hard to think about.

Anyway, if we had to pay to access roads, depending on the traffic load,
traffic could always flow at full speed, road investments could pay for
themselves and a lot of things would be healthier in society.

I know this argument doesn't convince a lot of people... I think we just have
to wait for some society to implement it first and the the rest of us can
wonder at the miracle and slowly copy it. Perhaps the Chinese? The seem keen
on innovating, for better and for worse :)

~~~
johnwalkr
Not quite as comprehensive as your example but in Japan all highways are
tolled and the toll is approximately the same as high speed train fare. In
cities all parking is paid too, normally even at your apartment. Driving is
often more expensive and slower than transit. The end result is much higher
pressure for maintaining good transit, good infrastructure for walking the
last mile (it’s rare to see a long stretch of uncrossable road or missing
sidewalk). There’s a lot of pressure to keep shops and restaurants within
walking distance of most neighborhoods, too.

~~~
BurningFrog
Thanks!

I didn't know about this.

I'm very impressed by Japanese infrastructure, and this is one more piece
explaining how they do it.

------
Wowfunhappy
I don't understand why this is happening. The article attempts to come up with
explanations, but I find them hard to believe. Although (most) roads are free
to use, we pay for travel in gas, car upkeep, and—perhaps most
importantly—time. All of which can be quite costly!

I live in upper Manhattan and have an unlimited-ride metrocard. But I would
much rather go shopping at the store that's a five minute walk away than one
that requires 30 minutes on the subway, even though the latter offers many
more options. I increasingly order products online instead of doing either.

To where are people driving that makes these longer trips worth their while?

~~~
24gttghh
Well... a whopping 45% of Americans have no access to public transit[0], in
any form. So I would hazard a guess that those with access to light
rail/subways is _significantly_ less than 45%.

Light and commuter rail ridership makes up only 300M/quarter riders out of a
total ridership of 2.5B/quarter for all forms of mass transit, if I'm reading
this right.[1]

[0][https://www.apta.com/mediacenter/ptbenefits/Pages/FactSheet....](https://www.apta.com/mediacenter/ptbenefits/Pages/FactSheet.aspx)

[1][https://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Pages/ridershiprep...](https://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Pages/ridershipreport.aspx)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Yeah, I have cheaper and faster access to transit than most drivers can ever
achieve—and I _still_ don't use it all that much!

Why are people driving such long distances—and putting up with traffic—in
their expensive cars? Is a larger house really that valuable?

I suppose the answer is "yes, it is that valuable", since we are where we are.
But, like, what's wrong with people?

------
scythe
Around the fifth time this was posted I tracked down the study, and the big
asterisk here is that yes, more roads do mean more traffic, but _part_ of that
traffic is mediated by more jobs and more residents. The way some people tell
it, it’s an unmitigated negative. Not quite.

------
apo
It's interesting to apply these findings and conclusions to other areas.

For example, Bitcoin is a lot like the interstate highway system in that it's
prone to traffic jams. The Great Bitcoin Scaling Debate of 2016 and 2017
attempted to address this problem

One camp argued strongly like the old-school urban planners in the linked
article: more capacity = less congestion.

Another group argued that variable-rate fees (a feature built into Bitcoin
from the beginning) would take care of the problem. When transaction volume
spikes, so do fees. This discourages use during spikes and incentivizes off-
peak use.

Bitcoin ended up adding a small increase to capacity in the form of segwit.

The result followed the prediction in the article. After a massive spike in
usage during the later part of 2017, fees spiked to $50 or more per
transaction. This was followed by a marked decrease in on-chain transaction
volume to the point that blocks aren't full today. Fees have likewise
decreased by more than two orders of magnitude.

Two other developments during 2018 may be relevant:

1\. The BTC/USD exchange rate collapsed.

2\. The Lightning Network (a way to route more transaction volume with fewer
on-chain transactions) was deployed on mainnet.

------
throwawaysea
TLDR there is a service/good that is useful (point-to-point personal
transport) and in high-demand.

This whole notion of "induced demand" seems like a suspicious artificial label
used to position roads as a negative. The reality is that roads provide
something people want - the ability to get around quickly, on one's own terms,
without dealing with waiting times or trip planning, and without some of the
unsavory experiences that can sour public transit (e.g.
[https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-
robbery-5...](https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-
robbery-50-to-60-teens-swarm-11094745.php)).

Building roads doesn't "induce" demand. Rather, it _fulfills_ it. There is a
limit to that demand - it's not like supplying infinitely more of something
would infinitely scale the associated behavior. There are only so many humans
and only so many trips they are willing to make in a day. And an area that is
100% roads obviously would not have any destinations worth traveling to
(leaving aside edge cases like race tracks).

So as far as I can tell, this is just regular supply-demand: people want
something, and supplying it satisfies that need. Why is this noteworthy except
that it lends dubious credence to a narrative Vox likes to push?

------
Chloro
If roads were 20x wider I guarantee traffic would be reduced or damn near
eliminated. They just want an excuse to charge people and/or enable the rich
to get special transport privileges. Also where do they get off claiming these
people are getting this for free? They bought it with their taxes, so to
double charge them and exclude the poor is pretty messed up.

~~~
k_sh
If roads were 20x wider, 68% of LA County would be streets.

Sure, turning two-thirds of a city into roads will cut down on traffic - but
within realistic restraints on road construction, induced demand is real.

(There are 140mi^2 of roads now[0], and 4,058mi^2 of land mass[1].)

[0]: [https://la.curbed.com/2015/11/30/9895842/how-much-parking-
lo...](https://la.curbed.com/2015/11/30/9895842/how-much-parking-los-angeles)
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California)

~~~
ummonk
Well there is a hypothetical world in which you could stack roads. It's
prohibitively expensive, but not physically impossible.

------
ummonk
Yeah, let's not build enough housing for everyone who works here to live here,
and let's also not build more freeway, to make sure they can't commute in
either.

Not only should we not make room for newcomers to the Bay Area (cause screw
immigrants), but no need to make room for people who grew up here either; just
have them live with their parents!

------
narrator
This is known as Jevons paradox[1]. Any resource that is used more efficiently
will be used more. The more efficiently drive time is used in terms of average
speed, the more it will be used.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

------
nck4222
Which is also why building bigger roads, generally doesn't improve traffic
issues.

Given the options available, people will generally choose the most hassle-free
route. If public transit improves, more people will take it, which will
improve road traffic.

If bigger roads are built, less people will take public transit, because roads
can handle more cars before the traffic factor forces people to use
alternatives.

This breaks down a bit outside cities where the only option is to drive (no
buses, too far to bike or walk), but remote areas don't usually have traffic
problems even with low capacity roads.

Edit, more info for the curious:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)

------
Hermel
Same applies to Internet bandwidth. The more you provide, the more it will be
used. And that’s good.

------
JoeAltmaier
...lets people drive more.

And in other news, more food makes people eat more. And more money lets people
spend more.

------
yason
For any practical purposes road traffic can be considered a gaseous element
that quickly fills as much space as is allocated for road space, with heavy
emphasis on segments that lead to several destinations.

Conversely, when roads are put on a diet and lanes are removed it generally
turns out that the traffic does _not_ pack into queues twices as long, as is
often expected or feared, but generally disappears.

To control congestion is to control the space available where congestion can
happen. Build a two lane road and you will have two lanes of congestion. Build
an eight lane road and you will have eight lanes of congestion.

~~~
waiseristy
In that case then, we should rid ourselves of all roads and live in small self
sufficient communes.

~~~
yason
That's very true if the goal is to get rid of automotive congestion
completely.

The practical solution is to find a trade-off where we allow enough congestion
to allow the necessary and important things to move but not too much that
allows convenience traffic that makes the city unwalkable and car-dependent.

------
avar
From the article:

> [...]perhaps you could create a system that also takes a person's income
> into account, which would let you make a progressive form of congestion
> pricing.

It's oddly inconsistent to hold that opinion about road use and not say real
estate use.

Very few people are of the opinion that someone making minimum wage needs to
be living in downtown Manhattan. Why shouldn't use of the scarce road
resources of Manhattan be treated similarly when it comes to pricing?

------
zone411
It is actually possible for an additional road to increase the travel time for
each driver, without any new cars added, and with everybody acting rationally!
Braess's paradox
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox)).
It has been observed in practice.

~~~
lazyjones
That's a whole can of bogus science you opened there. The Wikipedia example is
particularly funny, since it looks at a case where a new road is suddenly
added and all drivers currently on the road switch to it momentarily because
at one single moment in time it looks beneficial (but isn't). In reality,
people don't change their routes based on new roads added during their trips
and even if they did, they'd quickly learn a new overall more efficient route
instead of what this bogus example suggests.

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StillBored
Such a blanket statement. Its about _where_ you build the roads. If you build
big roads leading out of the city, then of course people move out and drive
more. There are other choices.

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stmfreak
This is such a frequently peddled lie it has become a cultural truth. The
saying neglects to mention that same volume of drivers on expanded roads is
always better for traffic—which is why we ask for more lanes and better roads.

Since driving is the preferred mode of transport, the fact that a reduction in
traffic encourages more driving (and congestion) should not surprise anyone.

The question we should be asking is whether people are being better served
stuck at home afraid of traffic or would they be better off getting out and
going places.

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Johnny555
Even people that claim not to believe this believe it without admitting it.

I tried to explain the concept to an acquaintance who claimed it wasn't true -
bigger roads just ease congestion so all we need to do is keep expanding roads
until congestion stops.

Then, after a freeway expansion was completed, he moved 10 miles to the far
side of the expansion to buy a bigger house. And now he complains about the
traffic since his dream commute for the first couple years is now worse than
ever.

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caravaggi0
and building trains makes people ride trains. The fundamental rule is path of
least resistance, literally and figuratively. It also matters who has the
powerful interest.

Seen this? Taken for a Ride - The U.S. History of the Assault on Public
Transport in the Last Century

[https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4](https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4)

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marcosdumay
> and building trains makes people ride trains.

Only if the trains carry people to a place they want to go.

