Reply to Bowser promised “zero traffic deaths” 10 years ago, but fatalities have doubled

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I love the people on here who are pro driving but also hate traffic. Just move to LA already. Enjoy 18 lanes of jammed traffic in each direction.[/quote]

Yes this makes me laugh too. What these people don't understand is that the more car-centric a city is the more people choose to drive and thus the more traffic. It's called "induced demand." It's why every time you widen a highway and add more lanes you wind up with more traffic not less.

People who think the key to making their commute easier is to eliminate bike lanes and bus lanes and other alternative forms of transportation are idiots because they don't understand every cyclist is a car not on the road. Every bus is 30-40 cars not on the road. Every metro line is thousands of cars not on the road.

If your goal is less traffic you should support every initiative to encourage people to walk or bike or take public transportation including stuff like Vision Zero that makes those alternatives safer.

If you're successful you might just wind up with a nice relaxing car commute with minimal traffic because everyone else decided to skip the car.

Though admittedly you will have to pay through the nose for parking and you may not be able to drive right up to your office due to closing certain streets to car traffic. But it would be worth it! Imagine Connecticut Avenue with virtually no traffic (except in the bike lanes) at 8am! This is actually what it's like in a lot of cities that have successful shifted most of the population to car-free travel. I was in Sweden over the summer and we rented a car and we were regularly the only car on any given street and could park basically anywhere we wanted (again parking was incredibly pricy in the cities). Probably the easiest and most pleasant driving experience I've ever had. You do have to be very alert to bikes and pedestrians but there are so many of them this isn't that hard -- they have their own wide lanes and traffic signals and as long as you follow the rules you won't have trouble.[/quote]

"Induced demand" is a lie. It's a bullshit theory made up by car hating weirdos. The average new car now costs almost $50,000. You think if we make traffic run more smoothly, everybody is going to rush out to spend $50,000 on a new car? Give me a break. [/quote]

+1[/quote]

So we have another person here who doesn’t understand economics. Do you deny basic physics also? Do you have problems following simple logic? If so, you have a likeminded friend in the author of the post you endorsed.[/quote]

The city has been trying to make traffic worse for years, and guess what's happened? Driving has become *more* popular. It is the only mode of transportation that's gaining market share. Bus ridership is down, subway ridership is down, cycling is down, even after correcting for the rise of remote work. I think your "induced demand" theory needs a little work.  [/quote]

You are an extremely reliable source of misinformation.

First, popularity of cycling in DC is increasing very rapidly. This article runs through the numbers: https://ggwash.org/view/96705/biking-in-the-district-is-for-normiesthats-a-good-thing

Second, the fact that people shifted from public transport to driving during the pandemic is an argument in favor of - not against - induced demand.

I see a lot of posts in this thread that have sought to educate you. That you persist in ignoring actual science and advancing false claims suggests that you are most probably a troll.[/quote]

Citing GGW as the authority: :lol:  :lol:  :lol: [/quote]

It's not just DC. Biking is down almost everywhere.

Bloomberg News:

Biking to Work Isn’t Gaining Any Ground in the US

Despite growth in New York and a few other big cities, commuting by bicycle is less popular nationwide than it was a decade ago.

"After increased investments in bicycle infrastructure, big experiments with urban bike sharing, an explosion in electric-bike sales and an overall pandemic bike-buying boom, the latest news on bike commuting in the US from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey is not impressive. An estimated 731,272 Americans used bicycles as their chief means of transportation to work in 2022, up from 2021 but down almost 75,000 from before the pandemic and 175,000 from the peak year of 2014."[/quote]

We will all die waiting for a shred of evidence that shows cycling is becoming less popular in DC relative to other modes.[/quote]

Look at the transportation survey released last year by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. They have driving up by more than 10 percentage points from 2019, even after correcting for remote work. Bicycling and everything else is down during the same time. [/quote]

And every time you cite that survey, its pointed out that its two-years old, commuting is not representative of all trips, and that the modes vary greatly within this very large metro area. It also shows that drivers are a minority of DC residents. None of this seems to sink through with you though. [/quote]

So, to recap (according to you):

Official government investigations into the causes of traffic deaths in DC are bullshit

Gold standard transportation surveys that we've been relying on for decades are also bullshit

Book reports by Estonian high school students on "induced demand" are not bullshit

Everyone got it?[/quote]

Yes, that response is purposely dense. Your gold standard transportation survey is actually a "commuting" survey. A lot of transportation happens outside of commuting you realize right? Take air travel for instance. Lots of people fly right? But not according to your survey. I guess planes are a figment of our imagination. Biking and walking are much more common modes of transportation for errands and entertainment, and that's where the usage is these days. Also, you do realize commuting patterns in 2022 are not being used to make planning decisions, because everyone knows 20-22 are aberrations.

[b]Here's a thought experiment on induced demand. Reverse it. If we decommissioned highways for instance, would fewer people drive to work?[/b] [/quote]

This is how you know induced demand is nonsense. It only makes sense in absurd thought experiments. How about giving me a concrete, real life example from life here in Washington DC?[b] Tell me how many drivers are moved into other modes of transportation by discrete changes in policy. Be specific. [/b][/quote]

We've had bike lanes for more than 20 years. There's more than 150 miles of them. Over the years, the city has spent billions of dollars promoting bicycling.

Surely, the induced demand crowd can tell us how many drivers all of that has pulled off the road. I believe someone likened induced demand to a law of physics, so the answer should be easy to determine. So let's hear it!

(My suspicion is the answer is close to zero and that all bike lanes really do is pull people off buses and subways and reduce the amount that Washingtonians walk). [/quote]

Crickets...[/quote]

People have already linked you the bike share data that demonstrates massive year over year increases before the pandemic, a dip during it, and then new records every single month of the last two calendar years.

"According to a recent report by Transportation for America, the 100 largest urbanized areas expanded their total lane miles 42 percent between 1993 and 2017 (equivalent to more than 30,000 miles of lanes), exceeding their collective 32 percent population growth during that time. Despite all that road construction, total delays in those regions skyrocketed 144 percent."

^induced demand

Shut up.[/quote]

The question was how many drivers has the bicycle experiment in Washington D.C. gotten off the road. Seems like a pretty basic question. Your nonanswer screams loud and clear that you have no idea. [/quote]

If you’d like to pay me a few hundred thousand dollars, I could run a survey and devise a methodology to compile an estimate for you. But asking others to do quite time-intensive calculations for you when you’ve demonstrated a strong aversion to credible research findings and have belittled academic researchers is a bit rich.[/quote]

It is legitimately bonkers that no one can point to a single study from the past 20 years showing that bike lanes in DC do what they say it does. You would think government policy would be based on more than just wishful thinking. The DC government is so depressing. [/quote]

It's pathetic we can't say whether bike lanes reduce the number of cars on the road or if they merely reduce the amount of walking people do/people taking public transportation. Evidence free policymaking.[/quote]

There are no studies because they dont want to know the answer, because they know it will be "bike lanes mainly reduce the number of walkers and people taking the bus, etc."

"We reduced the number of people walking!" is not exactly a great selling point for bike lanes. [/quote]

Your ridiculous presumptions are a bad counterpoint to decades of evidence on this question.[/quote]

Yet you, yourself, have provided zero actual evidence. Not even a link to one study from “decades of evidence”.  
“Your ridiculous presumptions” expect people to nod sagely at your random comments— without expecting any actual data? [/quote]

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