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An Economist Plays American Truck Simulator: Induced Demand
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- čas přidán 12. 05. 2024
- Induced demand is the idea that adding more of something will increase demand for it - like adding another lane of traffic will increase traffic that wants to use that lane. It's a real issue in urban design and freeway planning, so let's get into it some more and see in what ways adding another lane may not be the problem it's typically made out to be...
Good video, and a very interesting discussion topic! Overall I agree with your main points, but there's quite a lot of nuance to adding more lanes. It might work for a small spread-out town that has enough space to accommodate cars (Like Rockport, as in your example), but in cities, cars are too space inefficient, and there's too many residents to accommodate all of them driving.
One of many tragic examples of the destruction caused by car-centric design would be Hartford, Connecticut; 'Alexander Rotmensz' made a pretty informative video about it.
There's also mind-blowing photos on the internet of how downtown Houston looked like in the 70s because of all the induced demand for parking - a huge surface parking lot with a few skyscrapers sprinkled in-between. Countless comparisons of cities before and after construction of urban highways also demonstrate how much needs to be sacrificed to fit all of the cars (Cincinnati 1955 vs 2016 comparison shows complete destruction of urban fabric of the city, especially near the union terminal).
Cars are also partially responsible for the distances between everything that make it unfeasible for people to not use them. Arbitrary parking minimums and car infrastructure require a lot of space, and that spread everything out. That's also the reason why immediately converting commercial areas into pedestrian-only would probably not end well: there would be no way to get to those places without a car because people would still be too far to walk or bike to them. That makes it a kind of self perpetuating cycle: you need more car infrastructure to get places because everything is too spread out to not use a car because the car infrastructure takes a lot of space.
But luckily, induced demand works both ways. So, if building more highways induces demand for cars, building more transit induces demand for it. And that matters because transit (and walking) are a lot more space efficient: while 1 lane of road can carry around 1000 people per direction per hour, light and heavy rail can carry upwards of 25,000 people per direction in the same amount of space. That allows for denser cities, which in itself reduces demand for cars and allows for more errands to be done on foot. It also allows to save historic downtowns from getting moved down for another freeway.
This is a very condensed analysis with limited amount of time i have for this comment, and there's for sure inaccuracies, but I think you get my general idea. Thank you for your video and experiences, I enjoyed watching it!
I consider Curutiba, which took away roads and massively increased bus service. It is in a tropical climate, where having short walks and waits is necessary for good health. We just need to ask our mother-in-law autos to kindly stop running our lives.
Getting good mass cargo movement is something I'd like to see innovations in.
Great Video! This answered a lot of my questions on the topic
Glad I could help out there!
Lol eyes on the road
Indeed! I drift badly when I look at the camera!
Where are the limits of the induced demand theory? I am from Austria. Roads and Freeways are usually never clogged. People decide to use public transport because, for many journeys, it is faster or cheaper. Many lower income families decide not to have a car at all, as it is not needed.
I do not see where induced demand regarding to roads would apply. The supply of roads is not filled up by demand. Another lane would not lead to anyone switching to the car.
Austria is a beautiful place, one of my favorites. It also has a more compact way of living than the USA. So, absolutely, one more lane won't do anything there.
But Vienna can always use one more coffee shop, wouldn't you agree? 😊
@@An_Economist_Plays Indeed, one can never have enough Coffee 😁