You can move more people by getting some of them to take transit or ride bikes or walk to work, though they are quickly replaced on the road by enough cars to keep the speeds more or less the same (induced demand again).
Did this guy just make the argument that shifting people to cycling and public transit just induces more demand for driving? What a profoundly stupid idea.
Shifting people to active and mass transit options requires making those options more efficient than driving. It means fighting and winning a god damn war on the car; taking away space from cars and giving it to active and mass transit options. At a certain level it is a zero sum game. So no, after the shift to bikes and not just bikes, cars are not coming back.
I think maybe he meant it was a critical mass thing. If you half-ass your cycling and pedestrian infrastructure (ie.: basically all of North America), you remove or narrow motor vehicle lanes. Few people ditch their cars for cycling or walking because the infrastructure still sucks, so all you end up doing is having a bit less space for practically the same number of cars.
Either you make the cycling infrastructure usable and comprehensive or it doesn’t work at all.
The whole argument around induced demand is that people have a certain ‘tolerance’ when choosing a mode of transportation, and if an option becomes intolerable then they’ll switch modes to a more tolerable option or forego trips entirely. If enough people mode shift to public transit and cycling then driving becomes faster and some people will switch back to driving or drive for more trips they otherwise wouldn’t take until an equilibrium is once again reached between speed and tolerance, so the author’s argument is the only way to ensure this equilibrium is reached at speeds that drivers desire is to reduce the number of people in the city overall.
Since this isn’t a realistic option, the author argues that ‘fixing traffic’ needs to be re-framed as ‘improving the quality of life for people.’ As long as politicians are obsessed with ‘fixing traffic’ via increasing car speeds and reducing delays for drivers things like cycle tracks and transit lanes are a political albatross around their neck, but if politicians instead frame the objective as improving the quality of life for people moving around the city then things like building more transit lanes, cycle tracks, pedestrianized streets, etc. become more reasonable and justifiable.
Did this guy just make the argument that shifting people to cycling and public transit just induces more demand for driving? What a profoundly stupid idea.
Shifting people to active and mass transit options requires making those options more efficient than driving. It means fighting and winning a god damn war on the car; taking away space from cars and giving it to active and mass transit options. At a certain level it is a zero sum game. So no, after the shift to bikes and not just bikes, cars are not coming back.
I think maybe he meant it was a critical mass thing. If you half-ass your cycling and pedestrian infrastructure (ie.: basically all of North America), you remove or narrow motor vehicle lanes. Few people ditch their cars for cycling or walking because the infrastructure still sucks, so all you end up doing is having a bit less space for practically the same number of cars.
Either you make the cycling infrastructure usable and comprehensive or it doesn’t work at all.
The whole argument around induced demand is that people have a certain ‘tolerance’ when choosing a mode of transportation, and if an option becomes intolerable then they’ll switch modes to a more tolerable option or forego trips entirely. If enough people mode shift to public transit and cycling then driving becomes faster and some people will switch back to driving or drive for more trips they otherwise wouldn’t take until an equilibrium is once again reached between speed and tolerance, so the author’s argument is the only way to ensure this equilibrium is reached at speeds that drivers desire is to reduce the number of people in the city overall.
Since this isn’t a realistic option, the author argues that ‘fixing traffic’ needs to be re-framed as ‘improving the quality of life for people.’ As long as politicians are obsessed with ‘fixing traffic’ via increasing car speeds and reducing delays for drivers things like cycle tracks and transit lanes are a political albatross around their neck, but if politicians instead frame the objective as improving the quality of life for people moving around the city then things like building more transit lanes, cycle tracks, pedestrianized streets, etc. become more reasonable and justifiable.
For sure I agree that “reduce traffic” is the wrong metric and “improve quality of life” is the right one.