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]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]

The government has very little influence over people's transportation choices. I mean, we've built more than 150 miles of bike lanes and bicycling is becoming *less* popular. [/quote]

That's because the availability of bike lanes does not actually overcome people's reluctance to bike which is actually due to discomfort with biking (including not knowing how) lack of access to bikes as well as safety concerns. The majority of bike lanes don't even address safety concerns because people who don't want to bike are not just worried about being hit by cars. Also many bike lanes don't actually protect bikes from cars (most are just painted lines and drivers disregard them) so they do not make someone who has never commuted by bike before to start doing so.

But induced demand is real -- bike share programs have been enormously successful because they actually do provide non-bikers with a way to overcome a major obstacle to biking.

And induced demand with regards to cars is definitely a real phenomenon. The easiest to measure is the impact on usage of turning a two-lane highway into a four-lane highway. Lots of studies on this. People see the four lane highway and think "I won't have to wait to pass people -- this will go much faster" and they make decisions on where to live and work and when to drive based on it. The effects are lesser with regards to widening existing multi-lane highways but are still there. There is also a science to this when it comes to toll lanes -- you need the toll to be high enough that few enough people will pay it so that it's actually faster to use the toll lanes. If you charge too little everyone will just pay it and then the toll lanes get backed up. This is just a different variation on the concept of induced demand.

I am not even someone who cares much about bike infrastructure (I think in the US if you want to reduce cars on the road you should focus about 95% of your efforts on developing clean affordable convenient public transportation and about 5% on bikes) but induced demand is a basic principle of infrastructure planning. Saying "it's not real" reveals you to be a dilettante. It's a demonstrated and accepted phenomenon.[/quote]

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