"Frank F. Matthews" wrote in message
news:wkNqe.54260$6g3.10021@tornado.texas.rr.com...
>
> The increase of convenience from the freeway generates more demand from
> growth toward and beyond the end of the expanded freeway. When
> construction delays occur this demand can actually precede the
> construction. But yes, in some sense freeways increase traffic.
Mainly a long term effect at best as people move further away from high
priced areas to find an affordable house. That effect mainly happens in
high growth areas where Government strongly restricts the building of house
which drives up prices. The strong limit on providing housing to workers
is mainly a problem in California.
That is no where near your claim that the effect of building a freeway will
be for it to increase traffic as soon as it is built. The quick fill up
effect is almost zero according to reputable research.
Traffic congestion is a very strong effect of the total number of jobs and
the lack of building sufficient capacity to handle the increase in jobs.
Transit is such an insignificant part of transportation that it effectively
provides no increase in capacity while diverting funds away from roads that
do significantly increase actually used capacity and reduce congestion.
Here is what we learned in the dot-com bubble in Silicon Valley
1) The amount of traffic goes up directly with the increase in jobs even if
no capacity is added. (bubble inflation)
2) The amount of traffic goes down directly with the decrease in jobs
(bubble burst)
3) The reduction of bottle necks reduces congestion for the time that jobs
are not growing quickly (last several years). The reductions in congestion
have lasted a long time.
4) Not building extra capacity does not stop traffic increases (pre bubble)
5) Building transit has an immeasurably low effect on reducing congestion at
a price that is tens to hundreds of times more expensive than increasing
road capacity,
6) The cost of rail transit is roughly a million dollars for each person
that transit gets out of a car. from their car. The cost of supporting that
person that is attracted out of the car is in the range of $10
K to $20K per year per person.
>
> In many US cities there is little connection between job location and
> residence location.
The connection is that typical travel time per day is one hour. That
limits the distance between job and home. Lessons learned
1) Jobs change often which makes it almost impossible to buy a home that is
always close to work.
2) Sometimes the job stays the same at the same company but the company
moves which greatly increases the commute length.
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