"DTJ" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 11:00:41 -0400, Mitch Haley
wrote:

I've heard it said that building roads to relieve congestion is like
buying looser clothes to cure obesity.

Well if you listen to environmentalists without using any critical
thinking skills, I could see that.

Environmentalidiots say this all the time. What they ignore is the
growth of the population. Our roads do not get busier simply because
we build more roads. They get busier because more people are driving
as more people get their licenses. This is due to growth from births
and from immigration.


Right, the population keeps increasing. Does expanding the roads improve
congestion? Experiments in cities have proven that they don't. LA, San Jose,
San Diego, and other large cities in California are the prototypical cities
where such exapnsion has failed to keep pace with demand. There is no reason
to believe that it will work anywhere else, either.

The analogy does have some real life examples that support it.

It amazes me how stupid their argument is, yet people tend to believe
most things the media tells us without thinking about it. How could
more cars appear simply by building a road? Uh, aren't there people
in those cars? They can't drive on two roads at once...


It happens for all of the following reasons:

- some folks who were using alternative transportation opt to drive
- folks give up alternative routes and use the major arterials (not a bad
thing, but...)
- city planners close previously used routes or add "traffic calming" (speed
bumps being the prime example) on surface streets which makes them
unattractive for commuting
- folks move to the area now that one of their primary complaints, urban
congestion on the roads, has been addressed
- folks give up the inconveniences associated with carpooling and ride
sharing because they perceive that conditions have improved
- city workers must return to the previously used roads and perform long
delayed maintenance, hence rendering these roads useless for 1 to 2 years
- the new roads (supposedly maintained by those same workers) are ignored
during this period because they are fixing the old ones. They deteriorate
rapidly and what happens becomes a series of alternating road/lane closures
that reduce the effective width of the new roads back to what they were
prior to expansion

Hence, when I-280 was expanded through San Jose, things were nice for a
couple of months. Then they added Rte. 85 and things improved again, for a
short time. Before 6 months passed, however, it was again faster to cycle to
work than it was to drive (most days, though there were some rare exceptions
when I could drive and beat my cycle/shower time).

It amazes me who stupid their argument is, yet people tend to believe most
things the media tells us without thinking about it. How could traffic
improve just because a road was built? Uh, aren't there people who make new
choices when alternatives are offered? Doesn't this add to the road/traffic
burden in an urban area?

Rick