I love this format and the range of articles you’re sharing. Especially the FDR piece, which now makes me want to continue my reading of the James Macgregor Burns bio.
There is no functional difference between induced demand and latent demand. Induced demand is demand that comes from travelers who would not have taken the highway, usually due to congestion. Most are trips that would have occurred anyway but via a different route, although some are trips that people were taking by other means (transit, carpool, etc.) and a fraction that would not have been taken at all. New highways and expanded highways rarely create new economic value on their own in the present day. By contrast, they almost always do harm to the communities through which they are built and, by facilitating sprawl, exacerbate the problems they were built to remedy.
I have to strongly disagree about using congestion tolls for transit, at least in today’s anti-transit environment. First, it helps meet the objection of drivers who say they would take transit if it were better/safer/faster/nicer. Second, political support for transit is weak, even in NY. Without the congestion surcharge, the MTA would have to try to meet its maintenance and capital funding needs by raising fares or additional funding from NY and NJ. Raising fares hurts ridership while there is very little statehouse support for transit. Mass transit in the US is slowly dying, a process that will only accelerate with the new Administration.
I love this format and the range of articles you’re sharing. Especially the FDR piece, which now makes me want to continue my reading of the James Macgregor Burns bio.
There is no functional difference between induced demand and latent demand. Induced demand is demand that comes from travelers who would not have taken the highway, usually due to congestion. Most are trips that would have occurred anyway but via a different route, although some are trips that people were taking by other means (transit, carpool, etc.) and a fraction that would not have been taken at all. New highways and expanded highways rarely create new economic value on their own in the present day. By contrast, they almost always do harm to the communities through which they are built and, by facilitating sprawl, exacerbate the problems they were built to remedy.
I have to strongly disagree about using congestion tolls for transit, at least in today’s anti-transit environment. First, it helps meet the objection of drivers who say they would take transit if it were better/safer/faster/nicer. Second, political support for transit is weak, even in NY. Without the congestion surcharge, the MTA would have to try to meet its maintenance and capital funding needs by raising fares or additional funding from NY and NJ. Raising fares hurts ridership while there is very little statehouse support for transit. Mass transit in the US is slowly dying, a process that will only accelerate with the new Administration.