Induced demand is not a phenomena to be feared but one to be welcomed, according to a recent Reason Foundation report by Steven Polzin. Demand for travel is always growing, and if new roads reduce the cost of travel, they will be used. Highway opponents say that’s why we shouldn’t build new roads, but Polzin points out there are many economic benefits from new road capacity and even from the demand “induced” by that new capacity.
Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this 35-page report.
New road capacity, Polzin says, allows people who either weren’t traveling at all due to congestion or who were traveling at inconvenient times or routes to avoid congestion to travel at preferred times and routes. This makes it appear that new capacity has “induced” demand but all it has really done is released demand suppressed by congestion. To the extent that new capacity leads to new travel, says Polzin, that generates economic activity that is good for the region.
Polzin also points out that the pandemic has changed travel behavior so induced demand (i.e., the release of suppressed demand) probably won’t be as important as in the past. People are working at home, substituting telecommunications for travel, and substituting on-line shopping for trips to the supermarket or mall.
More important, Polzin endorses road pricing as the “most effective tool for reducing induced demand.” I wish he had mentioned that road pricing effectively increases the throughput of highways during congested periods. A typical freeway lane can move 2,000 vehicles an hour at free-flowing speeds, but throughput can fall below 1,000 vehicles per hour in traffic. By keeping the number of vehicles per hour below 2,000 at all times of the day, road pricing effectively doubles highway throughputs during rush hours. Thus, instead of pricing people off the roads, it is pricing them onto the roads. This is the best argument for road pricing that even my friends at the Reason Foundation usually fail to make.
The people who argue that induced demand is evil not only oppose new roads, they think we are better off tearing out or reducing the capacity of existing roads because, under the induced demand hypothesis, it will lead to less driving at no cost to the economy. This is an excellent report that provides a response to all those who claim that we are better off with fewer roads.
New roads don’t boost the economy. Because eventually you have a point of diminishing returns….As such what’s happening now. Adding 10,000 lane miles of new highway adds ten thousand lane miles of maintenance. In industry and economy; infrastructure costs curb revenue/profitability so their aim is to have as little infrastructure as possible. LESS they need it…..
With gas prices….some RINO politicians are arguing gas tax abatement…… detaching Americans further from infrastructure they should pay for utilizing.
Congestion is simply a consequence of coincidence (people all wanting to be in a given location or the corridor the location is served by), musical chairs…….when 10 people vie for 9 seats someones gonna fall on their ass or just have to stand and wait. That’s BASIC PHYSICS, Two objects cannot occupy the same space. That distribution model is byproduxt of our road layout.
With gas prices…. businesses like Uber, door dash and delivery are in fact drivers argue are no longer that its worth it. Its what happens When On-Demand society hits the wall with geopolitical energy realities. Today’s modern global supply chain is time sensitive and highly individualistic…where as a great deal of energy is expended solely to deliver something as little as an ounce…..to your doorstep before you whine online it didn’t arrive on time. 10000 miles of highway won’t fix that.
Bike messengers are very energy efficient, as distance is within geographic boundaries of the city. Cargo cycles are becoming a growing trend…..because:
– no license to drive
– no fuel costs
– no insurance
– no registration
Vehicles are more easily disposable or repairable.
”
New roads don’t boost the economy. Because eventually you have a point of diminishing returns….
” ~lazythinker
Do you ever think about what you’re saying or does it just spontaneously spew?
You can’t have diminishing returns without having returns.
If you have returns, you have an economic boost.
And yet you start it all with literally claming none.
Which is it? It can not be both. And that’s a rhetorical question, btw, you’ve already demonstrated you’re not a good one to ask.
”
Congestion is simply a consequence of coincidence
” ~lazyspewer
Yet again, zero thought. Literally claiming that a butterfly flapping it’s wings in Fargo leads to a bunch of people at 4:14pm hitting the road ( to drive home from work ). Ya, just coincidence, eh? FFS.
I’ve long found the anti-car folks reaction to tolling interesting. As y’ll know, they love to coo about how people drive because of subsidies. Yet when you present tolls, where people obviously pay for driving, they shift gears and oppose them.
Almost as if they’re acting on feelings –> hate cars; and then scrounge around for some “reasons” to use to justify their hate and hide that they’re just acting on feelings.
At 26 lanes wide, the Katy Freeway in the Houston is the widest freeway in North America, was the result of a 2.8 Billion dollar expansion project that took place between 2008 and 2011. The primary reason for this mega-project was to alleviate severe traffic congestion. The freeway was widened, congestion got worse. Houston’s official traffic monitoring agency to find that travel times increased by 30 percent during the morning commute and 55 percent during the evening commute.
Transportation researchers have been observing induced demand since at least the 1960s, when the economist Anthony Downs coined his “Law of Peak Hour Traffic Congestion”, which states that “on urban commuter expressways, peak-hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity.”
Many departments of transportation are instead touting the benefits of toll lanes, and variable tolling to lessen congestion.
In his paper from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, author Todd Litman looks at multiple studies showing induced demand effects. Over the long term (3+ year), induced traffic fills all or nearly all of the new capacity subsequently built.
http://www.vtpi.org/gentraf.pdf
San Francisco’s Central Freeway carried around 100,000 passengers per day before it was damaged by 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The surface-level boulevard that replaced it carries only 45,000 cars. Far from decreasing economic activity, the freeway removal turned the surrounding blocks into one of the city’s more desirable neighborhoods. Other freeway removals—typically undertaken in dense, central city areas—have been shown to produce similar results. Look at Grocery store design, they move ALL essential and widely purchased items in the rear of store (milk, meat, deli) Why? Besides hosting all refrigeration infrastructure; it forces customers to peruse thru “lanes” or aisles to look at stuff they might want. Boulevards and Main streets do the same thing. Highways/expressways RUSH people in and out of city boundaries, not only ugly, it’s bad for business.
Here’s a better strategy: Do nothing…..When every logical course of action is exhausted, the only option that remains is inaction. Be it 4 lanes or 40, those lanes end at a choke point a filter. Cities are geographically limited to how many vehicles fit on city streets. Even if you increase their speed, their slowest aspect is people arriving and departing. So do….nothing. If traffic get’s particularly bad, Bikes, private vehicular transit and carpooling may emerge spontaneously to cover this circumstance. So remember, the reason you’re stuck in traffic or complaining why you’re stuck in traffic…remember you’re not stuck in traffic, YOU ARE THE TRAFFIC
Lazyreader, the only thing missing from your summary is elementary mathematics. I think you must (really must) agree, that at one extreme, a freeway of infinite width cannot be clogged by induced demand, because the number of cars is finite. At the other extreme, a freeway of 1 lane width is almost guaranteed to be jammed with cars.
I’m not saying there is a linear relationship, but a relationship must exist. At some point, the freeway will be wide enough to be more than adequate for the worst-case scenario of traffic. Where I live, in Arizona, Phoenix achieved that sweet spot around 1990, because urban density did not yet prevent building new freeways. Yes, it really happened: Traffic moved freely at almost any time of day, and induced demand was not discernible.
Of course, if you don’t like freeways, you probably feel a gut reflex of aversion at the idea of building enough freeways to reach the sweet spot. That is not the same as an argument, however.
Studying mathematics and science; namely biology…. has given me a more jaded view to technical problems in human society, belife of them being Solved by More technical insertion; makes me giggle and facepalm simultaneously.
Pharmaceutically induced Pyrexia ….Whenever a patient gets bounced from ward to ward, there’s always a chance a high fever could be sustained…or even caused by a constant stream of different medications prescribed by 2-3 different physicians……. It’s call drug fever………..If a four lane highway is converted into a 8 lane highway… Los Angeles I-405 is now 20 lanes wide in some areas….Built in 1961; it’s over 50 years old and doubled in width per decade with no discernible effect on traffic smoothness or efficiency.
To quote a Vulcan: “Proposing the same flawed strategy over and over again will not make it more effective, Ensign.”
Every 1.6 kilometer-per-hour (1 mph) reduction in vehicle speeds on urban streets results in a 6 percent decrease in traffic fatalities and even more so of traffic delays. Lower speed limits are more efficient and convenient. Most of the day, cars aren’t traveling the speed limit, due to traffic congestion. Speed comes into play more in the early morning and late at night— when people are harder to see, drivers are more distracted or impaired, and when the roads are wide open. Lower speed limits are more efficient and convenient. Lights are timed to the posted speed limit, so lower speed limits mean more green time for both the street and the crossing street. Fewer crashes result, which helps to reduce congestion.
The fact; we’re not building much transportation in form of roads/highways in the US not just because the costs are exceptionally high, but because the benefits are too low. Also because quantity of drivers will not increase to cover cost of the infrastructure. Diminishing marginal returns to new roads are largely due to diminishing distance reductions as the network is increasingly complete. The interstate is Finished. If states had their own “Inner-state” it would also be Finished.
The Interstate was largely completed by the 70’s and 80s. During the past two decades, the primary objective of highway spending criteria was not new roads; it had shifted from expanding the nation’s road stock to maintaining it. Combined with the nations more than 617,000 bridges; repair is more paramount than expansion…..And an investment in repair would permit greater traffic efficiencies…
Lazyreader wrote “Here’s a better strategy: Do nothing…..When every logical course of action is exhausted, the only option that remains is inaction.”
Does the same reasoning apply to other capacity issues? When schools are stacking kids on top of each other, do nothing and let parents figure out stuff like homeschooling, distance learning, and evening classes? Or do we continue to build and expand schools?