Reply to Interesting twist on DC "density argument" - Metro ridership continues to plummet

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There’s a pandemic.
If you haven’t noticed, car traffic is way way down too.
Should we tear up all the roads too?[/quote]

No, but [b]we should be assessing how commuting patterns will change [/b]before we commit to new road projects.  We'd be silly not to be doing similar assessments regarding the long term impact on metro riding.[/quote]

We don't know that.  Indeed, we can't *possibly* know the long-term impact on metro ridership right now.  We'd be idiots to make any plans or assessments before the pandemic is over and we see what *actually* happens.  You can't "assess" something that hasn't happened yet.  [/quote]

So you think planning is purely reactive and no effort should be made to forecast?  That's not how government or business works.

Of course we don't know exactly how things will shake out long-term.  And, yes, to the degree possible we should avoid making large, expensive, irreversible decisions before we have a better sense of how things will look post-pandemic.  But you can't put everything on hold for years, and it could easily take years for people to have a sense of how many/which changes will be permanent.  Also, nothing is ever "permanent," things constantly change and policy makers can't simply wait and wait because they don't know how things will change going forward.

In a related context, policy makers are already assessing what jobs will not come back (which itself will impact commuting, among other things) and trying to plan accordingly.  Do you think we should wait until we see permanent job loss (and for long would be enough for you?) before we start to try to take measures to help counteract these job losses?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2021/02/17/unemployed-workers-retraining/[/quote]

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