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Re: No more roads...Wow! It's a wild one....fun read, what people think they know, and how they interpret travel demand numbers......
Author: BOB2
Date: 06-14-2019 - 15:29
Loonies on the fringes, who pick and choose the "facts" they like, and ignore those pesky things that they don't... But, several of his points are based on some interesting assertions regarding the math....
Traffic congestion is self constraining, you have a mathematically "finite" travel time budget to use with which to allow you access your needs (employment, goods, services, personal travel, business travel, etc.), and we're not making days longer... So, at some point (as we have actually seen) when travel times increase past a certain point, people substitute, for less time consuming choices. This effect is seen in a leveling off of the growth of and/or a decline in vehicle miles traveled per capita, in "traffic' saturated urban environments.
Like that yarn about the imbalance of traffic on route 10 where there are only half as many cars going one direction, as the other.....
So, as a transportation economist, who's published a few peer reviewed papers on travel demand, when will they start to run short of folks who went one way, and never came back? When we do surveys we see some variability, more folks on Friday are going to Big Bear and won't be counted until they come back on Monday... But, this statistical variability is usually very small.
Most folks taking route 10 to piano lessons with Jimmy and Suzy, would probably come back the same way (assuming equal utility in both directions???), so where did these Minnesotan's disappear to, if these counts are correct...?
If not abducted by space aliens, then possibly a parallel route in the reverse direction that offers better travel time (and/or unique to this location?) maybe....? Of course, this authors conclusions don't seem to recognize this as a problem, except as to where to locate the McDonalds, which makes for some real nice dramatic "copy", but is not good "analysis"...
This is right up there with much of the rest of the Complete Street dogma, reduce traffic capacity in congested corridors, and the "traffic" (e.g. they mean this observed VMT effect...) will miraculously "fall",
No it won't. But, the millions of folks who still have to make the trip, and can't substitute things like their employer's place of business, will waste even more gas, have shorter electric vehicle ranges, will take longer to deliver goods, and cost those folks needless money and time stuck in the now much "delayed" and "worse" traffic congestion.
I support more alternatives, and we have to do a better job of providing more alternatives, and no we should not spend lavishly on new highways, if, for no other reason, than the fact that we don't have enough money to even properly maintain the ones we have...
But, this "don't build it" and they won't come nonsense, and, if we punish the evil driver, he'll drive less nonsense is a perfect example of the kind of credibility eroding, simplistic, loony toon theory based, political "overreach" being promoted by this "brand" of today's political "true believers".....
Traffic congestion is self constraining, you have a mathematically "finite" travel time budget to use with which to allow you access your needs (employment, goods, services, personal travel, business travel, etc.), and we're not making days longer... So, at some point (as we have actually seen) when travel times increase past a certain point, people substitute, for less time consuming choices. This effect is seen in a leveling off of the growth of and/or a decline in vehicle miles traveled per capita, in "traffic' saturated urban environments.
Like that yarn about the imbalance of traffic on route 10 where there are only half as many cars going one direction, as the other.....
So, as a transportation economist, who's published a few peer reviewed papers on travel demand, when will they start to run short of folks who went one way, and never came back? When we do surveys we see some variability, more folks on Friday are going to Big Bear and won't be counted until they come back on Monday... But, this statistical variability is usually very small.
Most folks taking route 10 to piano lessons with Jimmy and Suzy, would probably come back the same way (assuming equal utility in both directions???), so where did these Minnesotan's disappear to, if these counts are correct...?
If not abducted by space aliens, then possibly a parallel route in the reverse direction that offers better travel time (and/or unique to this location?) maybe....? Of course, this authors conclusions don't seem to recognize this as a problem, except as to where to locate the McDonalds, which makes for some real nice dramatic "copy", but is not good "analysis"...
This is right up there with much of the rest of the Complete Street dogma, reduce traffic capacity in congested corridors, and the "traffic" (e.g. they mean this observed VMT effect...) will miraculously "fall",
No it won't. But, the millions of folks who still have to make the trip, and can't substitute things like their employer's place of business, will waste even more gas, have shorter electric vehicle ranges, will take longer to deliver goods, and cost those folks needless money and time stuck in the now much "delayed" and "worse" traffic congestion.
I support more alternatives, and we have to do a better job of providing more alternatives, and no we should not spend lavishly on new highways, if, for no other reason, than the fact that we don't have enough money to even properly maintain the ones we have...
But, this "don't build it" and they won't come nonsense, and, if we punish the evil driver, he'll drive less nonsense is a perfect example of the kind of credibility eroding, simplistic, loony toon theory based, political "overreach" being promoted by this "brand" of today's political "true believers".....
