You've discovered a core disagreement point in safety, "good for everyone" versus "good for the individual".
Yes if I live near a road I want trees/big fence/whatever so drunks don't take out my house. Yet if everyone does that, the number of traffic fatalities increases.
Of course it's a much harder stat to deliver who died and why versus just optimizing a single fatality count.
Go read the page you just linked, but more closely. Induced demand is relevant to adding more car lanes, not dedicated bus lanes and other off-grade transit.
Freed-up capacity is freed-up capacity, no matter whether it was created by building an additional lane or by motivating some people to switch to alternative modes of transport. If enough people switch to public transport to noticeable reduce congestion, the reduced congestion makes driving more attractive again, so some people will switch back to driving, or people who used to drive anyway will now make longer trips, etc.
So if you're just building out transit while keeping road capacity the same (less common with dedicated bus lanes or light rail, because space for those is often created by converting former car lanes, but with "other off-grade transit" modes you need to make a conscious effort of reducing road capacity if reduced car usage is your goal), it's entirely possible that public transport use increases, while passenger miles travelled by car remain the roughly same long-term.
How is increase of drunk driving suicides a bad thing? I hate this argument. Let's cut the trees because certain people just can't help themselves. Infuriating for all sorts of reasons
It wasn’t one reason. Some of it came down to liability (buckling sidewalks, falling limbs in storms, pruning), public safety (baddies can hide under trees and away from choppers before FLiR), impact on utilities (100+ years ago maybe there was a sewer line and maybe a water line, but not much else in most places).
It can cost tens of thousands to remove a single tree.
No shot those reasons would justify millions in tree removal fees.
However the huge budgets for roads could do it trivially.
You underestimate the impact of measuring fatalities as the only way of verifying success of transportation policy...
Certainly if other benefits were weighed properly it might not happen but if you ignore the upsides... (certainly we historically ignored shade for pedestrians).
Closer to where I work, over the four-year period ending one year ago, we had one tree per year fall during the Winter season. The period ended when the campus arborist did a detailed check of all the trees in the immediate area, and a number were removed.
In the wider area, this part Winter had multiple trees fall. Not tree limbs, entire trees. One came down in front of a minivan carrying a local bus driver & his supervisor. I've got pictures.
I'm a pedestrian: I own neither a car nor a bike. But I understand why some trees are removed. I don't think the trees here are not watered deeply enough, so they don't have a deep hold on the ground.
Drunk driver dies hitting a tree. Whose fault is that really?
Could have easily hit a person, a traffic pole, another car on sideways.
I don’t understand the argument why trees are at fault here.
Trees are the ultimate carbon capture, they produce oxygen and humidity, they provide shade, something beautiful to look at. They bring in birds and tree dwelling animals like squirrels.
Trees are a magical invention by nature.
That’s why we feel amazing walking in a neighborhood with trees.
"A drink driver might swerve off the road" killed so many old growth trees in the US.