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No, it isn't. Here's a good video by an economist covering it.
I guess if the induced demand argument was rephrased to "in places that already see infrastructure being used, it is likely that people will, eventually, fill the new capacity once new capacity is built" it would be less objectionable. But then it doesn't mean that the solution is automatically "just don't build anything, ever". It may as very well just be to limit the flow of immigration to this area.
You can also make the more subtle argument that, in specific cases, the costs of widening a road are not worth the benefits compared with the alternatives, but I don't buy that as a fully-general argument for all roads everywhere.
I cannot find any information on EE's background; what is the basis for calling him an "economist"? The channel has spawned a number of threads on /r/badeconomics (e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/mt3emq/economics_explained_thinks_theres_us/, https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/jg5gpf/economics_explained_on_heres_why_supply_and/,
https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/j8p85o/misleading_with_statistics_how_economics/) so I'm definitely not going to take that channel's word for anything. Speaking of BE, here is a thread which points out that ID is, in fact, just basic supply and demand analysis (and that it doesn't really need a separate name).
This video never addresses actual arguments for ID or the best evidence. In fact, it seems to agree that the elasticity of demand is basically 1, which is true. It A) makes a semantic argument about whether "induced" is a good term, and then B) misrepresents the empirical evidence. For example, following this video, you would think there's only been 1 or 2 studies of ID, one of which just looked at increases in road miles and driving over time, but this is not the case. No citations are provided, either, to check any of his following claims
Who is saying this?
That wouldn't stop the existing residents from using the infrastructure more. And would be a terrible solution for other reasons.
That "more subtle" argument is what I've been trying to convey in this thread--it's almost certainly net negative to double the width of I-35 through downtown Austin, but also for many other similar road projects. You also seem to be missing that a lot of people do expect congestion to be reduced.
Induced demand is often the justification for opposing road widening projects, or even supporting demolishing roads (a "road diet"). I'm not sure what else the conclusion would be, if you not only legitimately believed the version where roads always fill up immediately once you build them, but also that demand would just magically decrease if you took away roads.
I know that it's also used in the reverse direction to justify building buses, bike lanes, etc. Apparently for those modes, the demand that's been "induced" doesn't end up stressing the network to the point of congestion like it would for cars and roads (not sure why; maybe it's just because they're always fundamentally slower than driving?). Regardless, I still think it's justified to describe induced demand as an anti-YIMBY/pro-NIMBY/anti-building/pro-demolishing sentiment, as most of the time, it's invoked as an argument against car infrastructure. If I were making an argument for building bike infrastructure, I would rather argue that the demand is already there, just suppressed.
For what reason would existing residents start using the infrastructure more? Sure, you might see an increase from latent demand, but latent demand is the exact thing that's going to be suppressed when congestion is too high. If it was just latent demand, then the highway wouldn't end up being congested again. It would at worst only reach the point just before travel times significantly start slowing down.
I can think of a few reasons (and this was just me coming up with a third alternative), but let me put it this way: When you have a lot of people in an area, it ends up placing a huge demand on transportation infrastructure. For example, you can look at photo after photo of overcrowded train in Mumbai, India. Is the solution to build more trains? Well, where are you gonna put the trains and tracks? You'll end up having to demolish apartment blocks to do so, but that's introducing the same negative externalities of many road widening projects.
I know Quantumfreakonomics was proposing to double the width, but personally, I believe it would be more reasonable to only add 1 or 2 lanes instead (it looks like there's enough space for it on many parts of the freeway that are at grade with the surface).
In the first few years before population growth catches up, yes. Similar situation with the Katy freeway widening.
Induced demand is an argument against expansions because reducing congestion is a common argument in favor.
I'm not sure if you just haven't ever looked up the actual capacity of different methods or what, but a slower method being less congested doesn't make sense. Their made advantage is that they take up vastly less space per person, space being extremely valuable and limited in more populated areas. (Also, transit naturally lends itself to congestion pricing--if major roads had toll roads with congestion pricing, that would substantially reduce congestion!).
If you equate "building" with "car infrastructure" that's just your issue. You can build things other than highways.
It's not the same, because you can fit vastly more capacity into less space. Trains also often go underground, although I don't think most US cities need that.
What is the point of a 7 billion dollar, multi-year project that will be obsolete in less time than it took to complete?
So... ignoring externalities, it's okay to widen roads as long as it's for the right reason? (e.g. not to reduce congestion, but to be able to let more people go where they want to go)
And again, I see proposals all the time for demolishing roads, or road diets, based off of induced demand too. It's not just an argument against expansion, it's an argument in favor of de-expansion. (But of course they also bring up externalities to argue for de-expansion too, not just induced demand.)
Interesting infographic, but what's the actual usage of those modes? If you're going to make the argument that they take up less space per person, you need to take into account actual usage, and not just theoretical capacity. (And for a true apples-to-apples comparison, you also need to make sure you're comparing trips with origins and destinations in the same places.) For example, for buses, the space taken up often ends up being higher than cars if there's low ridership and the buses are bigger than necessary.
And - assuming they do take up less space per person - so what? They just don't get congested from magically induced demand if they take up less space? I still don't understand why demand doesn't just magically get induced to the point that the trains are overcrowded like they are in Mumbai. They may take up less space... but then doesn't that just mean more people will be crammed in? If a highway had only motorcycle traffic and was completely congested, then gets widened and the demand gets magically induced, wouldn't the highway be once again congested with motorcycle traffic, even though motorcycles take up less space than cars?
So you would be okay with widening roads if the roads were tolled with congestion pricing?
Sure, but the cost of bulldozing is likely still the same, depending on the way the buildings next to the tracks were built. (You can't just demolish only half a building.)
To build trains underground (such as a subway system), you would need to first knock down the buildings, then build the tunnels, then re-build the buildings. Which ends up being even worse than just knocking down the buildings and not re-building them, instead just building the new tracks on the surface.
A lot of the cost (including time) is from general cost disease, which sadly plagues American public transit too (e.g. Paris's transit budget is lower than NYC's but they get more stuff done). But again, it's only obsolete if you only care about reducing congestion and not about providing more people the ability to travel through the highway.
I think "it will actually accomplish the goal you claim to want to accomplish" is kind of a bare minimum. I don't know why this is suck a sticking point.
I'm sure there are cases where expanding a road is the right call; it just isn't common.
Ok, and? Yes, in or near a growing city, especially, you want more space available to housing, stores, offices, etc. 50 years ago Austin's population was a 1/4 million, now it's 1 million and still growing. Space has become more valuable and it's a lot more likely that transit makes economic sense (not that it actually takes a huge city to make transit viable).
Sure; actual usage depends on how the city is designed. If you build massive roads everywhere (even in the middle of downtown), force the buses to sit in traffic, have one tram line with a handful of stops, subsidize parking, require private entities to provide excessive parking, legally ban dense housing in most places, etc. then people will drive a lot. If you don't do that, then people will use other methods of transportation.
Similarly, if the roads are congested, actual capacity will also be much lower. 2,000 cars per hour per lane, or a bit less than 2 seconds between vehicles, is about the absolute maximum when traffic is free-flowing (and already isn't particularly safe
It is easy to increase capacity on transit, for example by adding more frequent train service. (Note that adding lanes to a highway makes it less pleasant for each user, since they have to move over more lanes, while adding trains makes it more pleasant for each train rider, since they have to wait less).
It's also easy to implement congestion pricing on transit, which many places already do. If you did this on the highways, you would see reduced traffic.
It's possible for transit to carry vastly more people (see capacity infographic above), which means the point where it becomes overcrowded is much later, and only achieved in a few places. Every city in the world has car traffic, because the threshold of how many cars you can put in a city is so small. Most cities are literally never going to be Mumbai.
That would be an improvement (still wouldn't solve the other issues)... but again, with congestion pricing, you wouldn't have so much congestion to begin with, that's the whole point!
You could replace some of the existing road. There's quite a lot of it near the highway, frontage roads are common in Texas. I-35 through most of Austin is 2-4 lanes of frontage road each side, plus 3-4 lanes of highway.
So this is the best way to have people get around? Sitting around in constant traffic, completely wasting thousands of hours of human life every single day, in every single city? But they can get places... eventually. Sounds completely dystopian.
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