Where to spend money: roads or wildlife? 10 January 06

Roads are also usu. the first infrastructure project to fragment the landscape.

Best,

D

New roads do not create new traffic. (When was the last time you heard someone say, “Oh, look! They’ve built a new road. Let’s go drive on it.)

Improved roads draw traffic from clogged roads. They redistribute traffic. Folks alter their routes to minimize their travel time. The shorter travel times lessen pollutant emissions; your engine does not stop emitting when you stop to wait for traffic to move.

The result is distribution of less total pollution over a wider area; lessened emissions over wider areas lower pollutant concentrations.

I said “fragmentation”. Reread my comment.

And you have revolutionized, here, today, the profession of transportation planning with your assertion (hint: if it were true, we’d have no congestion today, as the roads built 30 years ago would have alleviated traffic congestion).

Congratulations. Brilliant. World-changing.

Please.

Your knee-jerks are so weak as to be pathetic. Your posts are like shooting fish in a barrel.

Oh, sometimes I unignore you just to kick your weak-*ss comments around. So sue me.

Best,

D

[ingnore]

many planning and environmental management practitioners will happily tell you that an expansion in roads has the consequence of increasing car traffic. Your attempt to make this sound like a ridiculous idea with your oh look new roads let’s drive on them comment is quite weak because to some extent this is what happens. if there is heavy traffic congestion this acts as a disincentive to drive so more people will be happier to take public transport however, if new road space is made available then the disincentive is weakened and more people who would otherwise take public transport will happily leap back into their cars which can seem sometimes, and in my opinion falsely, to be a rather more convenient and comfortable means of transport. this latest move by blair is very disappointing.

but I am seriously starting to wonder whether you are in fact from this planet at all.

New roads are built to alleviate congestion, on the specious ‘predict and provide’ principle. Congestion as assessed and the delays in travel time, cost to business etc is factored into a capital investment equation, and then the new, wider/bigger/faster road gets built with government finance, for which we, the taxpayer, pay whether we use the road or not. For the first few years, the road is great, traffic flows more easily and congestion is eased, but as more people find that their journey time has reduced, or that they can now get to point B from point A where they couldn’t before, they start to make journeys to the supermarket/sports centre/multi-screen cinema/whatever that they didn’t do before. Soon, new big stores/facilities cover all the green fields around the new road intersections because more people can get to them and it’s less hassle than trying to redevelop in the town centre. Now all the goods and services distribution starts coming onto the new roads to feed the new development around them and all the smaller traders in the town centre lose many of their customers and make way for identikit retail chains. Soon all the employees of the new developments find that they can get to work from further away because of the new road, and can afford to buy a house further out where it’s cheaper, until everyone wants to move there for the same reason and the prices start to go up. Then in comes the property developer and woops! another green field goes under bland formless identikit housing. Now all these new residents, who want to work in the shopping malls, and distribution depots and drive-thru’s (your version of English, not mine) and Scandinavian flat-packed-furniture plants all want to get onto the new road at 8.00 in the morning and….... what a surprise, there no room left!

We’d better build another new road.

Now I just know you’re going to say I’m a reactionary old fart that wants to go back to some non-existent golden age, and am just resisting economic progress, but let’s just turn that one around a minute.

The UK govt gets a huge slice of its revenue from indirect taxation, and an awful lot of that comes from fuel duty (which is why we have a $5/gallon here). We already know that if an urban mass transit scheme is proposed, the UK Treasury insist on putting the loss of fuel duty as a COST to the scheme, thus militating against its success. If the Oil price ( and thus the duty) had not shot up last year, our chanceller would have lost his shirt with an even bigger deficit.

So,of course, the government is going to keep on building roads, because they’re a revenue earner!. Now before you refute this, I have been driving all over the UK for the best part of 27 years now and I have seen the scale and pace of change in the UK road network. I hear the scale of carnage on the trafic news every day. I have seen large chunks of the counties of Kent and Sussex (the ‘garden of England’) slowly succumb to urban sprawl and I would not move back there for any money. The culture in much of the UK is based upon the car a personal statement and status, no, confidence symbol, rather than a means of transport.

What gives the lie to your hypothesis? Well , in the UK, we are still used to the taxpayer fundign the hidden cost of roads. I know you’ve had toll roads for decades, but they’re unusual here. There is a great new one round the North of Birmingham and our wonderful green-washed govt went to the private sector to build it as ‘good value for money’. It’s a superb road and costs £3.00 a car to drive on, saving a good 20-30 minutes off the Old M6. Funny thing is, it’s nearly always empty. When I go on it there’s cars passing me at well over 100mph, because you never see traffic police on it. And wow! NO TRUCKS, because the private owners of the road know that a 44ton artic smashes their precious road up as fast as 50,000 cars: so they’ve whacked the tolls up for trucks. Net effect, the old, taxpayer-funded M6 is now knackered and just as congested. Brilliant idea! In the 9 years of this labour govt., costs of using busses and trains have gone up in real terms on average 15% and 22% respectively whilst the cost of motoring has gone down 7%.

When you make people pay something approaching the true cost of using a road, surprise! they suddenly don’t want to do it so much.

Bring on road usage charging.

Now go and do something useful like running a sweepstake on how many hurricanes you’re going to get in 2006.

Colin

Colin & Mark,

Whilst I applaud both your excellent analyses, I think you are being a little unfair to both Tony Blair & the government. The fact is, government is not a “single being”, no matter how much there may be an ethic of joint cabinet responsibility. There are many government intiatives that are trying to wean people off cars (rural car clubs, maximum parking places for new developments etc.) but there are also other arguments in government that say we need better road transport. In the UK, it does seem to me that Gordon Brown and the Treasury is making many of the final decisions on these things whilst Tony Blair does front-of-house.

BTW, I will be pushing for a discussion of “joined-up-thinking” at Amberley Parish Council tonight between:

1. Parking 2. How to provide better public transport to a rural community 3. Planning guidance for new housing with respect to parking spaces etc.

PS. I put together a discussion document about cars and parking for our Parish Council. I can’t reproduce it all, but you might be interested & amused by this part:

PARKING IN AMBERLEY PARISH: WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT?

PREAMBLE: STEAM-LAUNCHES

A couple of summers ago, along with a couple of chums of mine, Jerry and Mugs, I took a trip along the Arun in an old wooden rowing boat. We travelled from Amberley to Pulborough, taking with us some good food and drink, and Jerome K Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat”. The trip was memorable by how much we laughed whilst Mugs read out passages from the book; that is, when he was able to do so satisfactorily without interrupting himself with his own laughter. (He was quite incoherent recounting Harris’ comic song!) Our own trip also had incidents which Jerome, Harris and George would have empathised with – it rained, Jerry broke an oar and eventually my sister, Candida, rescued us, somewhat reluctantly, from the Goodfellows pub in Pulborough.

Part of the humour of “Three Men in a Boat” is that the characters do not feel at all obliged to be consistent with their viewpoints. When a disaster happens to someone else, it is funny; when it happens to yourself, it is annoying. A shirt falling into the Thames is either a disaster or a joke depending on whose shirt it is!

Back in the 1880s, when JKJ wrote his book, rowers would share the river with steam-launches. As Jerome wrote on page 127, “I do hate steam-launches; I suppose every rowing man does”; and on page 129, “old ladies, not accustomed to the river, are always intensely nervous of steam-launches” (I love the gratuitously emotional appeal of the reference to “old ladies”; an inspired way of adding force to an argument!). So, what our heroes would do is get in the way of steam-launches, force them to go around, and use other ploys to make trouble for them.

But later in the book, they have changed their views. By page 158 they were stuck in Reading where the river is dirty and dismal; “one does not linger in the neighbourhood of Reading”. Fortunately at Reading lock they came across friends of theirs in a steam-launch who towed them “to within about a mile of Streatley. It is very delightful being towed up by a launch. I prefer it myself to rowing. The run would have been more delightful still, if it had not been for a lot of wretched small boats that were continually getting in the way of our launch, and, to avoid running down which, we had to be continually easing and stopping. It is really most annoying, the manner in which these rowing boats get in the way of one’s launch up the river; something ought to be done to stop it.”

CREATING A “PARKING WORKING PARTY” FOR AMBERLEY PARISH

People have many varied thoughts and emotions associated with cars. Indeed, much like Jerome, Harris and George with regard to steam-launches in a pre-car era, we probably all have inconsistent thoughts, to some degree. Whilst most would agree that cars can be very useful and some can get very attached to their own vehicle; many or most would also agree that they can be a menace. A whole host of evils can be blamed on cars; parking problems, suburban sprawl, important contributor to climate change, oil dependency, tarmacing over the countryside, noisy roads, air pollution injurious to health and well-being, danger of death and injury, and so on. And of course, old ladies, not accustomed to the road, are always intensely nervous of cars! As car numbers continue to increase, they can present a growing challenge to us all – and governments from around the world are trying to establish measures that can limit their use in favour of public transport, cycling, walking and so on.

... [miss a lot of detail here, & conclude with ..]

WORKING TOGETHER

It would be good if a number of us came together to discuss these issues and see what should be done. I do not imagine it will be easy.

A number of years ago I lived in Barnes and traffic was reduced tremendously when Hammersmith bridge was closed to vehicles whilst it was being strengthened. This prompted a public enquiry as to whether it should remain permanently closed to private cars. The public response was extremely divided. As I recall, the residents of Barnes were overwhelmingly in favour whilst the residents of Hammermith, Chiswick and Fulham as well as businesses generally were overwhelmingly against the idea. It was decided to reopen Hammersmith bridge to a restricted level of car use.

Simlarly, we should expect there to be a wide range of views and some conflicting interests when discussing parking and the use of the car in Amberley. I think that we will need tolerance, flexibility and good humour to come up with effective recommendations and solutions.

Perhaps it would help if we have our meetings on a boat?!

I think he’s lost it. What a daft post. If it wasn’t so sad and ridiculous I’d laugh.

Douglas Coker

I have never claimed to be from this planet. I challenge you to find a message from me that speaks of such a thing.

I believe that most citizens of prosperous Western cultures reject the Japanese model of each family living on a postage stamp in the midst of a megalopolis. It seems that we prefer larger lots in the relative peace and quiet of the surrounding suburbs. Stores and shops will follow their customers. There is no need to blame the expansion of metropolitan areas on road building. The supply and demand model that you dismissed, together with expanding populations and living standard seems accurate and arrant to me. (I learned a new word. Neeto.)

You grouse about government subsidies of the roadways, but ignore similar government subsidies for mass transit, which you seem to prefer.

You appear to have legitimate complaints about the form of British taxation. I do not live there and am not familiar, so cannot comment further, except to observe that the government seems to have distorted the market with artificial taxation schemes. However, none of that supports the ridiculous contention that building roads inflates demand for them.

You also appear to have issues with the direction of western commerce and exhibit nostalgia for the older shopkeeper model. I don’t think that you can stanch the flow with a finger in the dike. The people have spoken, albeit with their wallets.

I acknowledge that you can create an artificial demand for mass transit and artificially depress traffic by refusing to build roads, but that is an artificial support for the contention that roads cause traffic. The converse is true; traffic causes roads.

Economic expansion, and population increases drive traffic increases. Folks get more money they buy more cars per household and use them. When I was in high school, our family of 6 owned one car. When my children were in high school, our family of 6 had 5 cars. It was not because there were more roads; it was because we were more prosperous.

Withholding needed roads is a form of tyranny. I know that you believe that mass transit is the answer to all of the questions, but most citizens do not agree with you. Given a reasonable choice, citizens will vote to tax themselves and build more roads so that they can continue using their preferred method of transit.

You may think that they are making an error when they think that driving is more convenient, but they do not and it does not really matter what you think about their behavior. You prefer mass transit – you use it.

I don’t understand why you think it is important that you said “fragmentation”, but OK, you said “fragmentation”. Who cares?

Transportation planning (at least the brand that you practice) must have been in a sorry state if my observation that new roads do not create traffic is revolutionary and “world-changing”.

Growing populations and economies create demand for new cars and new roads. Roads do not cause cars.

The roads built 30 years ago are inadequate because we own and use more cars now than we did then. Did you drive yourself to school? Neither did I, but teenagers today commonly do. The roads that support that activity have not changed in the past 30 years; they are just more congested.

It is ludicrous to blame cars on new roads.

More roads lead to more driving & more roads—or sort of like runaway GW.

One difference – we have plenty of space (which we got cheap, at gun-point from the Native Americans), so we could go on paving paradise for a much longer time. If Britain gets paved over, think what it’ll do to the tourist business.

Or, from the tourist’s perspective, everyplace has become a samo-samo parking lot…except Outer Mongolia, the next tourist destination.

Hope policy-makers around the world read your piece.

I finally figured it out. Think, without Norb we wouldn’t have all these great discussions. I really liked Collin’s response to Norb (& I’ve read enough about urban planning to know he’s absolutely right).

Then all the folks who read this blog (hopefully some policy-makers among them) will get ideas to do the right thing & solve world problems.

Otherwise, this would only be the choir singing to each other in some boring monotone, and no one would tune in, and it would die out. In fact, where’s Jimbo??

So, Norb is actually a shill to get us to come up with our most brilliant arguments why we need to reduce GHG pronto.

And I had thought he might be Michael Crichton himself!

that he took a sabbatical.

It is too bad; he thought through his ideas carefully and made a lot of interesting points.

I don’t understand why you think it is important that you said “fragmentation”, but OK, you said “fragmentation”

It’s important because your completely incorrect argument had nothing to do with my point.

Who cares?

Because roads are the initial cause of fragmentation, like I said.

Transportation planning (at least the brand that you practice) must have been in a sorry state if my observation that new roads do not create traffic is revolutionary and “world-changing”.

Your observation is utterly and completely wrong. Thus my phraseology. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

You don’t do FUD well at all because you don’t know what you’re talking about.

HTH,

D

I never at any time posted any response or comment about your original post about fragmentation.

My first response to anything you said was the one that began, ‘I don’t understand why you think it is important that you said “fragmentation”, but OK, you said “fragmentation”’. That was in response to your sarcastic response to my post to Mark about his article.

Can you see the irony in your having urged me to read carefully?

What are “FUD” and “HTH”?

Norbert, I fear that I may well be sticking my finger in the Dyke. But that does not make me wrong for trying to warn people that the alternative of doing nothing is to let us all be submerged.

Your points about the imbalance between transport modes being down to interference through the mis-application of subsidy is well made. In fact a wholly privatised transport system would be an improvement in that, if ALL the costs of construction and operation, including parity on fuel duty were applied, we would have a much more equitable system. It always helps to compare apples with apples.

I fear I have been awfully rude: as an extra terrestrial, you must think my manners appalling. Please accept my apology.

best wishes

Colin

There are four, not one of the Centres for Ecology and Hydrology threatened with closure.

A few months ago, I helped to organise a public meeting with a speaker from one of them – a seabird expert from the Banchory centre, now on the closure list. They did the research which conclusively linked the massive breeding failure of UK seabirds to global warming (and proving that sand-eel fisheries are not the main culprit, although they certainly don’t call for this fishery to stay open). He said how important further research was – it can, for example, show whether seabirds can switch to new oil fish stocks moving into the warmer waters (which would justify strong fishing controls for those stocks, to give seabirds a ‘life-line’).

This is really tragic. I would urge all UK-based readers to respond to the Defra consultation, which ends on 17th February:

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/consult/ceh/

Almuth

This reallyis tra

The Arun valley really is a beautiful part of Sussex: you have raised some fond memories: especially of the real ales in that part of the country!!

I accept the criticism that I should not personalise the UK government too much, but since Mr. Blair has adopted such a presidential stance, then it is perhaps to be expected.

I am not anti-car per se. I need to use one for work or I could not do my job: I have to travel to lots of small communities in Rural Wales where there is just no alternative mode of transport and, yes it is a fantastic priviledge to be able to drive through the wonderful landscapes of Wales in all the different seasons. For longer journeys or to cities like Cardiff, London, Birmingham etc. I use the train because I can work, use my phone, laptop, read, have a coffee, use the toilet etc. Impossible in a car.

The experience in the UK (and more so in Europe) is that when you provide a more attractive alternative, people use it with alacrity. In Manchester and Sheffield, there has been a substantial switch from the private car to using trams because they are fast, clean, convenient, clean, warm and cheap. They also deal effectively with the other problem of car penetration into urban centres: parking. The land lost to parking spaces can be much more productively used if cars can be avoided altogether.

In rural areas the private car is a virtual necessity: but I would suggest that you explore car clubs and community transport networks as well.

all best wishes

Colin

Norbert is clearly insane.

For those of you interested in proof of this, the landmark study on ‘induced traffic’ (this is bureaucrat-speak for ‘oh look there’s a new road, let’s drive on it’) was conducted by the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA)in 1994.

The committee was commissioned by the Conservative government at the height of their huge 1990s road-building programme to look into precisely this question – do more roads cause more traffic? Clearly they hoped for a no – they got a resounding yes, and it was the beginning of the end for the ‘Roads To Prosperity’ building spree, which caused so much destruction.

When Labour came to power in ‘97 they accepted what the Tories had reluctantly done before them – building new roads adds to congestion, rather than relieving it. Something they seem to have forgotten since.

You can read the SACTRA report here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_econappr/documents/page/dft_econappr_610277-20.hcsp

I recommend Norbert does so before he addresses this one again. But I bet he doesn’t.

I have scanned portions of the report that you cited. Clearly, I have not had time to read the entire thing, but have looked for discussions of the effect of improved transport on the total amount of travel.

Paragraph 15 of the summary report contains a discussion that does say that the price, speed and quality of transport influences the amount of traffic.

Paragraph 47 tells us that there may be a way to decouple the rate of traffic growth from the rate of economic growth and paragraph 2.07 tells us that there is an ongoing debate about the relationship between the rates of growth of traffic and economy.

To me, all of this says that traffic is tied to economic growth but that the ease of traffic flow can also have an effect.

Then in Chapter 2, the report provides a graph showing the relationship between traffic and GDP between 1953 and 1997. The curve shows that traffic has grown about 15% faster than GDP. That seems to me to be a very small amount of traffic growth not tied to the growth of GDP, but maybe that’s just me. In addition, I found no place where the report accounted for the growth of the total number of British folks. I assume that some of the 15% increase in total passenger miles traveled is attributable to population growth.

If I have missed something or you have some insights, please let me know.

I have copied the paragraphs that I cited onto the bottom.

“15 Our consideration of the evidence leads us to conclude that income growth does have a strong effect on traffic growth, but that the amount of traffic is also influenced by the price, speed and quality of transport. An extensive literature of empirical studies suggests that this sensitivity is sufficient to result in a significant degree of variation in how much traffic will arise from any given level of national income. This leads us to conclude that policies intended to change the volume of traffic that will arise from any particular level of economic activity are, in principle, feasible.

“47 We conclude that there is scope for carefully judged policies which help to decouple the rate of traffic growth from the rate of economic growth, thereby reducing the environmental and congestion costs of traffic and also – to some extent – assisting in delivering the benefits of economic growth. Such policies include pricing, management and investment initiatives, in a balance which will vary according to the specific circumstances of each intervention. Appraising each case requires improved assessment of the conventional transport and environmental impacts, together with a more systematic consideration of the impacts on the wider economy.

“2.07 Developing a clear understanding about transport and the economy is a difficult task. Asking questions about that relationship challenges what for some is a fundamental and obvious assumption: that economic growth, the need for movement and the need to invest to facilitate that movement go hand in hand. The result has been an often quite polarised debate, in both academic and non-academic circles.”

I have some theories about the similarity between trolls under bridges and the dire predictions about AGW. It seems that many of those who want us to change our ways have their ways of making misbehavior appear deadly.

I have neither admitted to being a native of this planet nor claimed to be of extra terrestrial origin. You can get some clues by doing a Google search on Snorbert Zangox. I altered the spelling when I adopted the nom de plume.

no, failure to expand roads is not a form of tyranny. If the transport needs of people are not met, that is to say they have no reasonable way of making trips between their desired destinations particularly work, education, health and social facilities, then there is a problem I agree. However, the transport needs of the community can be met though a range of transport options ranging from the private vehicle through to various forms of public transport.

If you are concerned about issues of fairness and so on, as i assume you are as you seem to be concerned about the idea of tyranny, then i would suggest that public transport is the form transport for you. The reason for this is because private car use may be great for the individual but the overall impact on the health of society is huge in terms of air pollution and associated health impacts, the emission of greenhouse gases, horrendous numbers of deaths each year due to accidents and the list goes on. By contrast public transport does necessarily have such a negative impact plus it is considerably more accessible to the broad community. There is no fairness or justice in allowing individuals to pursue their own comfort and convenience at the expense of the community.

Sorry Norbert, that was the wrong SACTRA report; the 1999 rther than the 1994 version.

The 1994 report is only available in book form it seems. There is a useful summary here though:

http://www.cbc.org.nz/Resources/whycars.shtml

I particularly note this quote:

1. In 1938, Leslie Burgin, the UK Minister of Transport stated that “the experience of my Department is that the construction of a new road tends to result in a great increase in traffic, not only on the new road but also on the old one which it was built to supersede.”

This is not a new phenomenon. Newbury’s current problem could have been predicted had people like you not been listened to, against all the available evidence. Paradox: new roads make things worse for drivers, as well as everyone else.

The citizens have expressed their preference for travel by individual vehicle. They have overwhelmingly rejected mass transit. They eschew mass transit and choose cars every time travel by car is a reasonable alternative.

You have decided that you believe that mass transit is better for all of us. You have your reasons. You believe that travel by automobile increases emissions of carbon dioxide and thereby cause climate change. You believe that air pollution emitted by automobiles causes measurable deleterious effects on health. You believe that mass transit is more accessible to the broad community.

I do not agree with any of your contentions. I think that your contention that mass transit is considerably more accessible to the broad community is not supportable. You know that I do not believe that carbon dioxide has a measurable effect on climate. I also think that you would find that conversion from automobiles to mass transit would have a small effect on emissions of carbon dioxide. I also believe that air pollution has a very small effect on the overall health of the populace of Western societies. There are places, Mexico City comes to mind, where pollutant concentrations are so high that they do affect health, but such places are rare.

However, the fact is that you think that we should rely on mass transit because you prefer it. You further believe that we should ignore the forcefully expressed desires of the great majority of us and implement mass transit. I think that is a tyrannical attitude. The alternative, build more roads to ease traffic and make automobile travel more comfortable, is the democratic approach. The citizens often have expressed willingness to tax themselves to provide those roads. The citizens have seldom voted to tax themselves to build mass transit system.

Modification of automobiles to ensure that they do not have a deleterious effect on the populace is reasonable. We already have forced reductions in pollutant emissions to mitigate pollutant emissions. We already have forced installation of seat belts and air bags to reduce injury and death associated with collisions. As we identify additional problems and means to overcome them, we can alter the technology further.

You have provided a link to a summary written by a bankrupt activist group in Wellington NZ that apparently was dedicated to forcing conversion from automobile travel to mass transit. I’m sorry that I cannot consider that summary to be an impartial and unbiased decoction of the original report.

I also think that the 1938 anecdotal statement by a Minister of Transport hardly provides insight into traffic issues occurring now, 68 years later. The guy wasn’t even Nostradamus.

I also think that the figure (Figure 2.1 I believe) in your previous link provided evidence that travel does correlate strongly with economic growth. Perhaps you should review that report.

I see little evidence for your paradox.

Many thanks, Colin.

Yes, we did discuss car clubs etc.

Once we have a finalised strategy, I intend to place it on the village website, and I’d be interested in any comments about it from you (& anyone on this site) as I could link it in from here.

BTW, I think Forum for the Future is a good site for free articles – see this one which is in line with the comment you recently made:

http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/publications/economicsinthedark_page2431.aspx

All the best,

Peter

For those pursuing local eco measures this may be of interest http://www.goingcarbonneutral.co.uk/ The people of Ashton Hayes, a village in Cheshire, are doing some interesting things.

On a larger scale check out Planet Woking at http://www.woking.gov.uk/environment for information on their carbon reduction measures. Allan Jones who was involved in the Woking work has been appointed by Ken Livingstone and Nicky Gavron to head up the London Climate Change Agency with the intention of pursuing similar work on a London wide basis.

But Green Party member Jenny Jones was reported in the Guardian the other week expressing concern that there are not enough people involved in this project. More here http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1677088,00.html Anyone got the inside information?

Douglas Coker

It’s not only roads. I wrote a piece on the Aviation White Paper last month here: http://www.vitaltrivia.co.uk/2005/12/46

It seems that billions of pounds (most of it not public money but that’s not really the point) is being spent on the justification that traffic will grow as the white paper say it will. The only problem is that the traffic forecast model used in the whitepaper is based on hopelessly optimistic assumptions, such as sustained oil prices less than half what they are now and continued economic growth for decades to come.

So why does the government want to widen the M1? I expect it is because of a model forecasting traffic growth, I also expect this model is based on similarly hopelessly optimistic assumptions as the aviation white paper.

Find your own report on the study if you don’t like this one. I’m sure it can’t be hard. Unlike you, I don’t have all day to flame other peoples’ websites.

I could provide you with other studies which would show the same thing, but what would be the point? If you had an open mind you wouldn’t be here. The phenomemon of induced traffic is accepted by virtually every road transport specialist in the western world, and since you have no expertise in the subject or evidence to suggest otherwise it’s hard to udnerstand why you should choose to disagree with it.

Unless, of course, you’re more interested in prejudice than evidence-based policy. But surely that can’t be the case? After all, you’ve provided brilliantly convincing backup for your ‘views’ on climate change. Chortle.

You are a silly boy. Go to bed without any supper.

Especially for people who don’t own cars, are unable to drive, or cannot afford them.

People who live in cities may be paying higher property (& perhaps state and federal) taxes, which are used to build roads & freeways, even if those people do not drive cars.

Then the next thing they hear is that public transportation lines to their neighborhood or to their job have been cut.

I’ve seen programs on TV that show how unfair the system is, favoring suburbanites who live farther & farther away at the expense of huge tax burdens for city people & closer suburbanite, some of whom never use those eight-lane freeways to Timbuktoo Faraway Burb, or depend on public transportation.

You believe [IOW, state facts -D] that travel by automobile increases emissions of carbon dioxide and thereby cause climate change.

You believe [IOW, state facts -D] that air pollution emitted by automobiles causes measurable deleterious effects on health.

You know that I do not believe that carbon dioxide has a measurable effect on climate. [despite the fact that The Skeptical Environmentalist and 99.9975% of scientists do, as basic physical principles state such.]

Pet contrarian indeed.

With statements like these, why do you expect anyone to find you credible?

D

I accept your report as evidence that my hypothesis is correct. Total distance traveled is a function of economic activity and of population. The hypothesis that road building causes traffic seems spurious.

You were not the first to offer the opinion that road building causes an increase in overall traffic. Others have claimed that every expert in the cognizant world agrees with the opinion. You were the first to attempt to support the opinion with a published report. Unfortunately, the report you cited does not support your opinion. I reproduced several sections from your report that imply that economy, not road building is the prime factor.

I understand your frustration. However, I have done nothing wrong here.

Great links, thanks for posting them. I am aiming to try to get our local community group to adopt a carbon reduction program this year and this project will be an invaluable source of ideas and information. very exciting.

cheers

I accept your report as evidence that my hypothesis is correct…[t]he hypothesis that road building causes traffic seems spurious.

You[1] have revolutionized traffic engineering and microecon with your sage, evidenceless assertions, genius...er…pet contrarian.

Now you know. Roadbuilding causes congestion, absent other mode choices.

Best,

D

[1] “The studies have provided the most convincing evidence to date that road building alone will not be able to solve congestion and pollution problems. Extra road infrastructure will, in most cases, buy a few years’ respite from congestion on the inter-urban road network”.

I never at any time posted any response or comment about your original post about fragmentation.

You are correct, but your replies rarely include the text to which you are replying; coupled with your reply being immediately below mine caused the confusion.

Apologies.

But you still don’t know jack about autocentric transportation other than how to parrot “free-market”-based solutions (always auto-centric and never about choice of transport modes).

Best,

D

Alright norbert this is the last i’ll say on the matter. If indeed i was suggesting a form of transport for the rest of society simply because i preferred it (certainly not something that i have previously stated) then there would be a problem. Indeed i think this position more closely matches your own which seems to be the very individualist position we have cars, cars are convenient, so transport by cars it is without contemplating or caring about the very negative impact car use has on our communities in terms of diminished health and environmental degradation. This is not a belief i hold as you assert but the conclusion drawn from many research projects into the matter. Alternatively my argument in favour of public transport has nothing to do with my personal preferences but is based on the notion that it is a mode of transport that has the capacity to meet the basic transportation needs of the community but unlike cars it can do this with considerably fewer impacts on the environment and community health and from an economic perspective is accessible to a larger portion of the community. Clearly public transport is the fairer of the two options.

Obviously economic growth and population increase tends to lead to an increase in car ownership. Duh. The amount of driving that goes on, however, is another matter entirely.

You haven’t read the 1994 SACTRA report, so how you can tell that it ‘supports’ your silly assertions is beyond me.

You can order the paper version from HMSO if you like. Until you’ve read it, it will be hard for you to use it to support your daft assertions.

In the meantime, have a look at all the evidence Dano has provided you with and let’s hear your answer to that.

Maybe you should go into the traffic management business? I’m sure they’s value your certainty, if not your ability to evaluate actual evidence.

By the way, and just out of interest – where do you stand on intelligent design….?

Dano’s first reference does not say that building new roads causes new traffic. It does say that the author does not believe that it is possible to solve the interurban congestion problem by building new roads. He further believes that it will be necessary to construct new mass transit and to manage demand to satisfy the increasing need for transit to the center city. Dano copied the pertinent text to the bottom of his post.

Dano’s second reference (http://www.environmentcolorado.org/reports/costsofsprawl3_03.pdf) says, “Between 1992 and 1997, Colorado lost more than 270,000 acres of agricultural lands to development and other uses each year, destroying a valuable, long-term economic resource”. What it does not say is that there were 33,350,000 acres of farmland in Colorado in 1997. Thus, during the 5 year period development consumed farmland at a rate of 0.16% per year. At that rate, all farmland will have been developed in a mere 618 years. I wonder why the authors did not phrase their alarm in those terms.

The same reference says (about traffic growth), “Sprawling development patterns lead to greater traffic congestion by requiring longer and more frequent automobile trips and reducing the viability of transit and other transportation alternatives”. This sounds like the demand for suburban housing is driving the demand for roads and the increase in traffic. If so, increased road construction and increased traffic have a common cause, which explains the correlation between them but does not support the conclusion that new roads cause traffic.

Dano’s third reference, http://www.marypirg.org/reports/moreroadsfinal.pdf, does state that new roads create traffic. However, it uses Washington DC as an example by saying that congestion continues despite a 47% increase in roads between 1982 and 2002. The census bureau data, http://mumford.albany.edu/census/WholePop/WPSegdata/8840msa.htm, show that the population of the Washington DC metro area increased by 48% between 1980 and 2000. Perhaps, the new population drove the need for new roads and resulted in more traffic, meaning that the construction just barely kept up.

I have no idea what Dano’s fourth reference is supposed to be. Nothing in it appears to be pertinent to this discussion.

Dano’s fifth reference says, “Peak-hour traffic congestion is an inherent result of the way modern societies operate. It stems from the widespread desires of people to pursue certain goals that inevitably overload existing roads and transit systems every day.” That does not mean that building roads causes traffic. It means that travel is an endemic part of our societies.

The abstract (in its entirety) to Dano’s sixth reference says, “This paper attempts to apply the theory of marginal cost pricing to the services of the highways of the U.S.A. Empirical evidence suggests that “efficient prices” are generally much higher than present levels. This Implies that gasoline taxes should be increased and Special tolls charged in congested areas.” OK, there is too much traffic; this author wants to control it by increasing the cost of driving.

None of these demonstrates that new roads cause new traffic. They all appear to be saying that it may not be possible to maintain commutes to modern city centers by building more roads. They appear to acknowledge that population and economic growth saturates the roads. It appears that for the most part, road construction during the past 30 years has barely kept pace with that growth.

These authors proceed from that observation to the conclusion that we must invest in more mass transit. They are assuming that we must maintain center cities that have a wide variety of economic activities, that every metro area needs a sampling of most of the technology and commerce types. An alternative would be to encourage regional enclaves, perhaps built around particular industrial and commercial components (i.e. Silicon Valley), that are complete with all needed services. Similar enclaves exist around Washington DC in biotech and technology centers.

I think that “Intelligent Design” is quite similar to “Smart Growth”. Both are belief systems disguised as sciences.

...you still haven’t read the 1994 report that started off this whole discussion, have you?

Which was the whole point.

And I’m very pleased to hear that you don’t approve of ‘belief systems disguised as science.’ Cough.

I have read everything else that anyone has provided.

I don’t have access to a copy of the 1994 report. Do you? Can you provide a link? Can you quote some passages?

Did I say that I disaprove?

Dano’s first reference does not [begin standard contrarian folderol]...belief systems disguised as sciences. [end standard contrarian folderol]

Elastic travel demand choices.

Best,

D

I have not and will not review 5,500 abstracts. Nothing in the first few articles in your Google search supports the silly claim that new roads create new traffic.

Mark made the silly and unsupportable statement that new roads create new traffic. Several attempts by Paul and Dano have failed to rescue his fatuous claim. It seems that the reason is that the claim is unsupportable.

I will waste no more time reading irrelevant abstracts.

Nothing in the first few articles in your Google search supports the silly claim that new roads create new traffic…[s]everal attempts by Paul and Dano have failed to rescue his fatuous claim.

Only fail to the chronically underinformed.

I’m pointing out for everyone else’s benefit that you don’t know what you’re talking about [for the few who don’t already] and pointing them in the right direction, as this is the issue.

IOW, for the norb requirement: here it is in monosyllables. That is: “gosh, it’s easier to drive, so I’ll drive more!”

It’s obvious you can’t/won’t make the connection, either because you’re either too dense or it’ll screw up your FUD.

Our Pet Contrarian just makes it easier to focus our attention.

Best,

D

Your statement, “IOW, for the norb requirement: here it is in monosyllables. That is: ‘gosh, it’s easier to drive, so I’ll drive more!’”, is very similar to the quip that I put in my original post on this subject. My form of the concept was, “(When was the last time you heard someone say, “Oh, look! They’ve built a new road. Let’s go drive on it.)”.

The problem is that the data do not support the contention that it happens to any significant degree. If you will remember, at least 85% of new traffic correlated with increased GDP in Great Britain. The GDP vs. Traffic plot does not account for traffic increases due solely to increased population. The residual traffic increase is small, not significant. Those are the only data that we have seen here.

Your attempt at providing a monosyllabic description is actually a sales pitch made by EPA staff to Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the Science Advisory Board in November 12, 1999. It is clear that EPA intended the slide presentation to convince the SAB to support a position or to support additional research. If you read it carefully, you will see that it includes caveats to the effect that economic expansion and population increases contribute greatly to increased traffic and that the EPA was attempting to use models to determine how much increase in traffic is attributable to the mere presence of the new road. A remaining question would be how much the increased traffic that new roads generate increases economic activity. This document does not provide evidence that new road construction increases traffic. The SAB response to this presentation might provide some useful information.

I do not intend to respond to any more of this fluff. If you have something substantial that might move this fatuous claim from the category of radical left-wing mythology into the category of serious scientific subject matter, let’s see it.

If you have something substantial that might move this fatuous claim from the category of radical left-wing mythology into the category of serious scientific subject matter, let’s see it.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

D