Induced Demand & Roadway Widening: Everything You Always Wanted to Know (and Weren't Afraid to Ask)
Ray Delahanty | CityNerd3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2024
explainer · general · evergreen · 2022–2024 on HN
CityNerd Ray Delahanty explains induced demand and what happens when freeways are widened. He walks through the economics of supply and demand applied to traffic and asks how much new traffic appears and whether congestion returns.
HN commenters link it as a clearer explanation of induced demand for people who have not studied the topic.
Up next
12 mo on HNHow Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)
Not Just Bikes
17 HN recommender · 2024–2026
4 mo on HNTraffic Calming is Everywhere in the Netherlands
Not Just Bikes
4 HN recommender · 2020–2025
8 mo on HNCan YOU Fix Climate Change?
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
10 HN recommender · 2021–2026
11 mo on HNStroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]
Not Just Bikes
12 HN recommender · 2021–2025
3 mo on HNThe Secret Reason Horses Let Us Ride Them
CGP Grey
3 HN recommender · 2018–2023
9 mo on HNCities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud
Not Just Bikes
10 HN recommender · 2021–2025
9 mo on HN8. The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities
Fall of Civilizations
7 HN recommender · 2020–2023
10 mo on HNWhy This Channel Exists (and why I hate Houston)
Not Just Bikes
11 HN recommender · 2021–2025
10 mo on HNWhy American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme [ST03]
Not Just Bikes
14 HN recommender · 2021–2024
9 mo on HNThe Wrong Way to Set Speed Limits [ST06]
Not Just Bikes
9 HN recommender · 2021–2025
10 mo on HNWhy Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)
Not Just Bikes
10 HN recommender · 2021–2026
9 mo on HNHow the Dutch got their cycle paths
BicycleDutch
9 HN recommender · 2013–2022
3 comments from Hacker News
Have you read anything or watched anything about induced demand or did you just read the expression and figured it all out by yourself? ▶ this video
Books are not a finite resource? Obviously there is a finite number of trees but there are enough for it not to be a bottleneck. Land on the hand is a finite resource, especially in large, urban cities. There is no way to design a highway or other car infrastructure that will meet the demands of any reasonably sized city without dedicating an unreasonable amount of land to cars. Anyway, Ray explains it better than I could and he agrees that the term is bad: ▶ this video
The problem is that "inducing demand" for people who would otherwise take public transit doesn't actually increase efficiency. Putting more cars on the road is not necessarily a net benefit. See this video from CityNerd for more details: ▶ this video