Thread: General chat Economics " induced demand"

Originally Posted by chuck

So if you use the Ring Road & Hume Hwy your going to a slum.

Really!!!

More space & trees out my way than St Helena.

Only once you get past whittlesea.

I have seen that one yes but compared to EE he was more of an apologetic it seems for the green side of the story. There's two more blokes on the interwebs that have a tendancy to rant on about such things; not just bikes and another bloke who's name I forgot (thankfully). I find it funny how they both rant on about how things are so much better in .nl as compared to the us where they both come from it seems. As a native .nl I do no share their opinion and even believe it to be down right propaganda at times, but I digress.

Back to the induced demand story: What I have found most interesting is to see the period around the lock downs. Roads were REALLY empty back then. When things opened back up people were ridiculously careful and/or simply made use of the situation and used it as an excuse to stay away from the office. Traffic jams in the "between lock downs" were almost non existent. Then came the period that the word covid all of a sudden became an offense so we now simply have a "flu" season again (funny, I called covid the chinese flu from day 1 :P) and although much has been done to work more freely from home and I do appreciate that mind you, I find it mind boggling how the same roads have the same traffic jams all over again whilst there should in theory be a, what, 50% reduction in road use since working from home a couple of days per week IS the new norm? Admittedly, I have also heard from people that their bosses want them to come in, period. I guess to defend that overpriced office in the city centre where an IT-shop has no business being located in the first place.

This to me seems to be evidence that roads are built to handle daytime traffic only and are never built to handle the peak hours, well, they are built for it where possible over here (longer on and off ramps to not hinder the flow of traffic to much) but not as a complete system to be able to handle traffic during the daily commute. The same also goes for public transport for that matter. I used to go by train when I was a poor student with free public transport (and have vowed never again since) and during the evening I could -never- get seating. The trains (which should really be called trams in .nl) were always packed more heavily than a meat truck.

I guess this is "good use" of public money? On the other hand, if more lanes means more people start using a road and that that never ends, I guess that tells you all you need to know about public transport. It mostly can't and never will compete?

Cheers,
-P