Reply to what's with local pols opposing expanding 270 and 495?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Induced demand in transportation is actually a contested concept and not proven.

https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-induced-demand-myth[/quote]

Citing Randal O'Toole about induced demand is like citing Andrew Wakefield about the measles vaccine.[/quote]

Just change “Twitter expert” below to “DCUM expert”. Everything that you have been posting about transit and induced demand is irrelevant to this project.

[quote] Another area where the Twitter experts often err is their assumption that public transit is the answer to congestion. That’s an assertion that Duranton and Turner said was false. “… we find no evidence that public transit affects VKT…” the paper says (VKT is vehicle kilometers traveled). They point out over and over that adding transit does not remove traffic from the roads in any meaningful way.

Another thing not factored in is that a congested wider road moves more vehicles than a congested narrow road. While the issue of congestion is not solved, the extra trips induced that re-crowd the road are still happening and still have benefits to society. Additional economic activity is happening. While there’s plenty of room for debate over whether these benefits outweigh other costs (pollution, roadway fatalities, etc), it is something that does need to be factored in.

Finally, the data supporting induced demand is only for freeways. Toll roads don’t work the same way, because the economics are different. While the perceived cost of being stuck in traffic is a factor on freeways, toll roads add an additional charge that may vary with time of day, allowing pricing to reflect supply and demand. These road additions can relieve congestion without inducing too much new demand as to negate the benefit (the lower part of the chart in this article explains this visually).[/quote]

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/31/induced-demand-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/[/quote]

You're going to need to have a separate argument about tolls, because the governor's plan is for Transurban to pay to build the toll lanes, and then get their money back by charging tolls for drivers who want to drive in the uncongested toll lanes. What's the implication for people who don't pay to drive in the uncongested toll lanes? They'll be sitting in traffic watching the toll-paying drivers go by. It's built into Transurban's business model for the project. So much for "congestion relief".[/quote]

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