This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link