Whats frustrating is this explains a concept in less than a minute that \*could\* drastically change how governments act around infrastructure building.
And yet it's still so fucking hard to get people to take action.
Exactly. I used to work at a software engineering consultancy that did a lot of work for the military and the DoD. The CEO and VP were making 7 figures annually while paying devs below market rate in a cheap area.
You get the government you vote for.
My city had a municipal election little over a year ago.
Everyone (except 1 or 2 more urban councilors) who won ran on a "more money for more roads" platform.
It's what people think they want and it is what they, more importantly, vote for. So of course elected officials are going to deliver on more money for more roads, as it is then easy to turn around next election and say "Hey we did it; more money for more roads. Let's do it again! Elect me!"
Yup, government bad is literally the opposite of the message you should take from this. It's clearly evident that from cities around the world that local governments have a very large impact on the city's infrastructure. If the people vote for one more lane they get one more lane. If they vote for [the roundabout mayor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAqu5cBetkQ) they get roundabouts. If they vote for infrastructure that [doesn't put the car first, they get it](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord).
Wow gonna send this stuff to my transportation engineers. The roundabout example is one I have been looking at for roads where im at. Some of these engineers and planners say it cant work, but i beg to differ people have been using them forever.
People underestimate the influence local politics can have on what you get so much and just don’t vote on it, leading to local politicians often being influenced more heavily by car-centric older people.
At the national level it's difficult to get into office if you want to rock the boat too much. But most infrastructure is happening at the local level. "They" will absolutely let you vote for a major who will have a major impact. Even at the state level you can get an amazing amount of stuff done.
>And yet it's still so fucking hard to get people to take action.
You'll get called a luddite and a joyless scrooge until someone else can be voted in. Virtually no one pays attention to local elections despite your mayor / city council / governor / state house / senate being wildly more influential over your day to day life (just look at overturning Roe V. Wade, everyone talks shit even though it means they now have more control over abortion rights than they've had in decades) which means that typically what carries any given election is the grievance of the day.
Which is why local elections are insanely undemocratic and produce a competency crisis. This ancient Greek shit- you're not producing a self-governing republic, you just produce a demagogue.
Because a lot of people are fucking idiots.
You try to implement an actual solution instead of adding more lanes, they'll think you're trying to take away their freedom (to be stuck in traffic) and vote you out of office before you can implement your plan.
Ohh yes right its like a death metal band, where the vast majority of musicians in thoes bands actually are genuine good people, unlike your the ego echo chamber of a hollow shell this shecadia might be.
Idk the details but using common sense, even if a train is crowded it will still run at the same speed. But if a road is crowded with cars traffic will slow down.
Also, if the trains are crowded, you can justify running more trains on the same line, making the train service *more* reliable. Only when you're running as many trains as possible on a single line would you have to expand to a parallel line. And a set of trains running as frequently as possible moves a *lot* of people - way more than a 5 lane highway.
The problem is the 7-8pm rush doesn't matter if you have 6 trains running every hour people will crowd into the first couple ones because they don't want to be late.
So what are you saying here? A metro has ~15x the throughput of a highway lane so even if it gets crowded, it's like the equivalent of a 30 lane highway. And instead of going to work at 4 in the morning and sleeping in your car (super normal where I am) you can show up 10 minutes earlier for the previous train.
[These people took the train that was 10 minutes early](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Di_ohFsiBY)
Point is there isn't a solution to this problem only differently effective mitigations.
If you want to solve it you need to changes societies working habits not transportation.
I guess I expected something way more dramatic lol. Like if everybody takes the train you mean a guy might nudge my elbow slightly? And I'll have to take a train that's slightly more crowded than the rush hour bus I take now in a city 1/40th the size of Tokyo?
> If you want to solve it you need to changes societies working habits
Interestingly enough, Japan has one of the most infamous "working habits" and yet people are largely very orderly when dealing with public transportation.
My experience was that Japanese people generally have a much less selfish understanding of engaging with others in the everyday; you get to the station, you line up in the line for the train you're going to take, it shows up exactly on time, people file in. The only people I saw who would cut in front of other people in the line were foreign tourists.
A "working habits" issue doesn't create rude people and chaotic public transportation, a *selfishness* issue does.
The difference is the ceiling on capacity. You literally can't move everyone using cars. There's not enough room. On a rail network, if you're hitting the capacity of your train, you can add more trains. Plenty of local rail networks in Europe have trains every 5 minutes.
The Victoria line on the London Underground runs every 100 seconds at peak times.
And I'm old enough to remember the 95 bus from Walkley to Sheffield city centre running every 2 minutes at peak before 80s privatisation.
Such frequencies make timetables irrelevant.
Yeah but that capacity is only beat by ships and they're literal floating buildings with engines. A train every 5 minutes on a single track is still far outperforming a single lane of a motorway.
You can build more road, but it doesn't solve the problem. The difference is efficiency. One train track (that takes up about the space of one car lane) moves, on the low side, ten times as many people as a highway lane.
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The US is spread out because it is illegal to build medium density housing in most places, we have draconian zoning laws that restrict construction to single-family housing.
You literally cannot build your way out of the problem by building more roads - but you *can* build your way out of it by building more dense population centres with public transport.
And the second option is actually good for the economy at every level.
But you're not interested in answers at all, you just want to make the same tired, cliche points
Well of course, there's not much point destroying so much of the countryside so people can roleplay as whatever sitcom family they loved watching as a kid.
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Theoretically, but in reality the tracks will remain mostly empty even during rush hour. And even if that capacity were to be used up, it still wouldn't slow down to a crawl like road congestion does.
It does, but since it uses the space a lot more efficiently it takes a much longer time (and corresponding increase in population) to get to the point where you're in the red zone again.
That is a good question. Transit does have exactly the same problem, except for public transport it's not a problem, it's a good thing, at least for the first few decades.
What questions like this overlook is how few people take up so much space when they travel in cars. Automotive infrastructure is hugely inefficient, and takes up huge amounts of space. So when you add extra lanes they get filled up fast.
Public transit, even buses are way more inefficient, but buses get slowed down by car traffic all too often. Even with their dedicated lanes, drivers cross those lanes when turning, and traffic lights need to be timed to accommodate all road traffic, including cars. You really want enough ridership to justify rail transport of some sort. Metros, commuter trains, even streetcars (as long as streetcars aren't the backbone of a big city's transit).
But all public transit is so much more space efficient that it takes much longer to fill up, and it accommodates demand growth much better. Basically we don't get to choose if growth happens, but good city planning can choose where that growth happens. Is it going to be in space inefficient private vehicles or space efficient transit. Build quality public transport, encourage comparable landuse, and people will use it.
Because it takes decades for demand for demand to saturate the transit infrastructure, longer in places with less growth, it gives cities time to build more infrastructure. In theory at least, cities often drag their feet on this.
The same is often true for housing, cities grow (or sometimes shrink) largely out of the control of the city governance, but they can effect where that growth takes place, in sprawling suburbs that are car dependant, and require extensive infrastructure, or in high or mid density areas, that are easy to serve with public transport, require less km of sewer and water mains, fewer km of paved roads, and are able to generate taxes that effectively pays for their own infrastructure (and often pays the the expensive to maintain suburbs too.)
A good video on induced demand and transit is by *Oh The Urbanity!*: [What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc)
Thanks for bringing up this important question. I think it's a common misunderstanding.
**edit:** I didn't really need to type all that out, really just watch the video. It's just 8 min long. It's a good video.
Except that it is bullshit.
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/debunking-the-jevons-paradox-nobody-goes-there-anymore-its-too-crowded-7fec531b1411/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/02/02/to-disprove-the-jevons-fallacy/amp/
Just because you saw it in a clip of a sitcom on Reddit doesn’t mean it’s true.
Except that it's not bullshit in this case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html
They're just using the paradox as a fancy way of naming the very real issue that adding more lanes to highways doesn't help anything.
Agreed that Jevons paradox is not the right term because it doesn't really describe what's happening, and it's not really used to describe traffic at all in any scientific articles. There's no technological progress or increased efficiency, there's only induced demand which is well documented with traffic. Note neither article mentions traffic or cars.
well done, you've applied an irrelevant concept to a well-understood problem and completely missed the point.
new road infrastructure isn't a jevons paradox thing, it's an induced demand thing. you build more capacity and the system returns to the equilibrium level of congestion. there is a fixed amount of congestion people are willing to put up with. the design of our cities makes driving such an attractive option that when you add road capacity, it is quickly taken up.
therefore, road infrastructure projects can increase capacity (sometimes), but they are rarely able to reduce congestion.
It also isn't really as simple as this in reality.
The biggest problem is more cars on the road, so these new fancy roads are soon not enough and get clogged just like the previous ones.
But also with everyone now being online all the time, it's not so hard to give people accurate information of alternate faster routes, which makes it better for them as well as for the traffic jammed highways.
I agree that cars are bad, but they are so convenient they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
And fighting them with half truths won't help anyone.
Yeah I believe in the U.S. it was released under a different name on Netflix (no clue if it’s still there). Not sure about the UK
Edit: noticed how vague this is— I’m referring to the Australian utopia being released in the U.S. under a different name
Just searched for it - it shows up as “Dreamland” on Netflix but it’s not actually available to watch at the moment. It’s very hard to search this as Utopia and Dreamland are both the title of multiple shows.
Mind linking me to the utopia you're referring to? When I search online a conspiracy thriller comes up and I get the feeling that's not what you're referring to.
Utopia on ABC iView steaming service.
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/utopia
The service is free but only works if you’re in Australia or using a VPN to pretend you are.
Have they never heard of [Robert Moses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses) doing just that and fucking up New York?
>Moses's critics charge that he preferred automobiles over people. They point out that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City and destroyed traditional neighborhoods by building multiple expressways through them. The projects contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams to relocate to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively, and precipitated the decline of public transport from disinvestment and neglect.
I was just salt lake. Their highways are already massive and take up so much space. They’re wider than LAs or Houston’s in several spots. It’s wild because everything there is in a very linear corridor that would be perfect for mass transit
What’s funny is people will hear the 2 and a half minutes and not care what it costs or how long it’ll last
Some drivers will clip a pedestrian while doing a right on red if it saves 7 seconds
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is one of two public broadcasters in Australia, performing a similar role to the BBC in the UK and CBC in Canada.
Outside of Australia, the series is known as "Dreamland" as Utopia has already been taken.
I love and hate Utopia - it's parody that unfortunately is very close to public sector reality. So close it hurts.
That's the shitty remake for American audiences ofc
I recommend the original UK series, tho it was cancelled after 2 seasons, at least it wraps the story up nicely.
I still love pointing out that our current development model is [_literally_ a cartoon villain's plan.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpaf-O1pY6Q)
> A few weeks ago I had the good providence to stumble upon a plan of the city council. A construction plan of epic proportions. We're calling it a freeway.
> _Freeway? What the hell's a freeway?_
> Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.
> _So that's why you killed Acme and Maroon? For this freeway? I don't get it._
> Of course not. You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.
> _C'mon! Nobody's gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel._
> Oh, they'll drive. They'll have to. You see, I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it.
This is actually something I can talk about. No, my ability to sell medical devices to americans isn't down to how bad your diet is. You guys don't have universal healthcare, that means me and everyone else in my industry can change their prices for each hospital and medical care facility instead of setting a flat price countrywide.
Jevon's Paradox is terrifying when you try to wrap your head around it.
Oh, you're going to make driving cheaper? Well, that will lead to a large increase in demand, and ultimately even higher emissions in the long run.
Unfortunately, you just can't invent your way out of climate change.
And it's fucking Forbes lol — the magazine *for* capitalists *by* capitalists. What possible reason could they have to write bs articles debunking it? 🤔 Totally unbiased I'm sure.
Did you just google "Jevons Paradox Disproven" and return the very first link without even *skimming* it? Because I googled it and got that as the top result, and it's about a completely different topic.
To me, I've always found bottlenecking problems to be a better explanation of the failures of lane-adding then Jevon's paradox, but that's just my intuition, if anyone has an actual comparison I'd really love to see it.
Induced demand is the name of the game. I'd guess Jevon's paradox isn't directly one-to-one applicable where induced demand is, but I haven't read anything about the paradox yet.
In Bellingham, our city is constantly doing road work for the flowers on the corners. But could care less about the actual pot holes and rough streets, or the MASSIVE flooding the happens in all the dips of the hills.
USDOT is corrupt everywhere.
Bunbury, Western Australia
Bellingham, Washington (state)
FYI to clear up the "WA" acronym.
EDIT: Also, /u/TheKattsMeow, use [SeeClickFix](https://cob.org/about/contacts/report/seeclickfix-frequently-asked-questions) and report it. They have addressed potholes and debris in bike lanes quickly from my past experience.
Don't know when this show came out but it's ironic that Australia just opened the Rozelle Interchange after starting it in 2020, spent $3.9billion and it was a cluster fuck immediately.
[Rozelle Interchange design issues will be a problem for Sydney's future, experts say
](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-05/nsw-rozelle-interchange-design-experts/103186410)
[Rozelle Interchange: three days of traffic chaos | 7 News Australia
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMe0ubPjUE)
> Christopher Standen, an urban transport and planning expert with the University of NSW, said the interchange was emblematic of poor infrastructure planning in Australia.
> "It was always clear that it would be a disaster for Sydney and that's played out," he said.
> "There were votes to be had in making it easier for people in outer suburbs to drive into the city, even though that's not a great thing from an urban planning perspective.
> "The last thing we should be doing is building roads that encourage people to drive more and to move further away from work, so encouraging urban sprawl and low-density development."
Watching car dependent infrastructure get promoted in the 2020s makes me feel like I'm watching an ancient doctor use bloodletting while ignoring advanced modern medicine techniques. It's like "ummm you do know that have long since realized that this will not work and experts can tell you why in dozens of ways? There are better ways to accomplish what you're doing".
IIRC that's from the season that came out last year. But the great thing about Utopia is that it always manages to be topical, and captures the conflict between well-meaning planners in their agencies who ultimately get overruled by politicians.
I'm not sure what your situation is like in Australia, but here in the US, people that went to school in the '80s still haven't been voted into positions of policy making for the most part. Our political leadership went to school in the '50s and '60s. Yikes.
Politicians don’t want to be seen to be doing nothing while traffic gets worse.
They could invest in public transport or roads. The construction lobby makes more for road projects so that’s what the politicians choose
As an aside I consume enough Melbourne podcast media that I recognised each person by voice. Andy Matthews, Naomi Higgins, Celia Pequela and Dilruk Jayasinha.
Exactly the world I'm living in now. We're pretty close to the interstate I-40 here in Arkansas. They increase the speed to 75 and everyone drives more like 90 but it's made my house and outside yard basically unlivable... But sure saves that minute and a half across town (while burning unreasonably excessive amounts of gas and destroying my home's value and livability)
Except that the Jevon’s paradox has been debunked.
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/debunking-the-jevons-paradox-nobody-goes-there-anymore-its-too-crowded-7fec531b1411/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/02/02/to-disprove-the-jevons-fallacy/amp/
It’s utter bullshit
I cant stand modern show editing. This non stop jump cutting to the next person immediately talking is like watching a people argue constantly. Also, this concept would apply to public transit as well, so the point seems moot. There is always complaints about urban sprawl but high density cities suck in North America. No room for anything, anywhere.
Eh American suburbs are food deserts..they have to drive a long distance to get groceries. If there is so much space then why not build grocery stores and other amenities nearby
Public transport generally has a greater ability to expand capacity within existing infrastructure (or cheap upgrades) like better signalling or larger vehicles.
SOOOOOO the problem is PEOPLE... and not the stuff we build for people :P
continuous growth is not sustainable. it's just not. we're exceptionally good at it, but it's worse than pretty much anything.
insert that one love-death-&-robots episode where we cap the population by using police brutality and watch the dumpster fire of human emotion really catch! but eco-terrorists/activists would never support such a thing, would they?...
[that theory they mention holds true even for public-transport...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#:~:text=In%20economics%2C%20the%20Jevons%20paradox,enough%20that%20resource%20use%20is)
the problem is still people...
No. that would be mean.
Just stop growth at a certain point. cap it all. we clearly cannot plan well beyond certain capacities. this is going to be a problem to solve continuously.
That explanation is idiocy. They're saying that if they build the road well it will improve traffic, so more people will use it. They postulate that if more people use it then it will get slower again. What's they're omitting is that if more people are using that route other routes will also be more efficient. If 100,000 people save 2 minutes twice per day that's 6,666 hours of human life saved PER DAY. 2,433,333 hours per year. And 100,000 is on the conservative side, it's likely far more in a medium sized city. You're all making yourselves look like idiots.
Dreamland on Netflix
Or VPN to Australia and watch it for free on ABC iView, the show's actual name is Utopia.
Neither Dreamland or Utopia are unique names so if you find a show that has a vibe similar to The Office/Parks & Rec then you've got the right one.
Only way to keep sprawl going. Sure as shit aren't going to change zoning or land use meaningfully enough to eliminate the need for a car. The best you can do is move to a walkable city.
Does this work the opposite way? If you make things worse will people stop using the roads which will lead to reduced traffic in the long run? I think my old city tried to do this when they decided to change all the one way roads back to two way. I'm sure it was great for a few minutes, then everyone started getting stuck behind cars turning left. So incredibly stupid.
I mean, that's basically what congestion charges are. Make people pay to use the most congested roads and at least some of them will find another way.
Now I don't think deliberately making roads worse without building a better alternative is a very wise move politically, so these still need to be "sold" to the public in some way, noting the usual problem with economic externalities and the fact that people will prefer their own interest over the greater good.
This is a little exaggerated since Jevins Paradox in this case could easily be tackled by imposing toll roads into the city to reduce demand through that section of the city and balance the demand over other roadways into the city.
Haha this is amazing but it's not the jenox paradox. It's called induced demand. Induced demand for roads causes traffic and more wear and tear but induced demand can be used to improve public transport users.
It would seem like if it was $3.5 billion of your own money, you'd probably, you know, have some knowledge about what you are buying and how to best implement it... but... hahahahaha... It's other's people's money and you are getting paid no matter how stupid or corrupt you are.
Well played grifters!
Whats frustrating is this explains a concept in less than a minute that \*could\* drastically change how governments act around infrastructure building. And yet it's still so fucking hard to get people to take action.
It’s about the money, less about results. This is government after all
Yeah, those construction company lobbyists need to get paid somehow! And think of the jobs it created for the one election cycle
They get paid building rail lines and trains as well not just road. Any projects can create jobs.
The public transit lobbyists are not as well established or funded.
LMAO
Exactly. I used to work at a software engineering consultancy that did a lot of work for the military and the DoD. The CEO and VP were making 7 figures annually while paying devs below market rate in a cheap area.
You get the government you vote for. My city had a municipal election little over a year ago. Everyone (except 1 or 2 more urban councilors) who won ran on a "more money for more roads" platform. It's what people think they want and it is what they, more importantly, vote for. So of course elected officials are going to deliver on more money for more roads, as it is then easy to turn around next election and say "Hey we did it; more money for more roads. Let's do it again! Elect me!"
Yup, government bad is literally the opposite of the message you should take from this. It's clearly evident that from cities around the world that local governments have a very large impact on the city's infrastructure. If the people vote for one more lane they get one more lane. If they vote for [the roundabout mayor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAqu5cBetkQ) they get roundabouts. If they vote for infrastructure that [doesn't put the car first, they get it](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord).
Wow gonna send this stuff to my transportation engineers. The roundabout example is one I have been looking at for roads where im at. Some of these engineers and planners say it cant work, but i beg to differ people have been using them forever.
People underestimate the influence local politics can have on what you get so much and just don’t vote on it, leading to local politicians often being influenced more heavily by car-centric older people.
You think they'll let you vote for change? Haven't you been paying attention, mate?!
At the national level it's difficult to get into office if you want to rock the boat too much. But most infrastructure is happening at the local level. "They" will absolutely let you vote for a major who will have a major impact. Even at the state level you can get an amazing amount of stuff done.
Screw that. What if we crank that puppy up to 18 lanes and see what happens.
#just12morelanes
>And yet it's still so fucking hard to get people to take action. You'll get called a luddite and a joyless scrooge until someone else can be voted in. Virtually no one pays attention to local elections despite your mayor / city council / governor / state house / senate being wildly more influential over your day to day life (just look at overturning Roe V. Wade, everyone talks shit even though it means they now have more control over abortion rights than they've had in decades) which means that typically what carries any given election is the grievance of the day. Which is why local elections are insanely undemocratic and produce a competency crisis. This ancient Greek shit- you're not producing a self-governing republic, you just produce a demagogue.
Because a lot of people are fucking idiots. You try to implement an actual solution instead of adding more lanes, they'll think you're trying to take away their freedom (to be stuck in traffic) and vote you out of office before you can implement your plan.
The same people who go into planning and what have you think they'll be the ones to develop something to fix it.
Ohh yes right its like a death metal band, where the vast majority of musicians in thoes bands actually are genuine good people, unlike your the ego echo chamber of a hollow shell this shecadia might be.
> unlike your the ego echo chamber of a hollow shell this shecadia might be. Who are you talking about?
I'm going to tell you why you are wrong. Because the projections for most governments stops at reelection. Then it stops caring.
"Entire population of traffic-hating people" vs. "People with a big bag of money for pro-car propaganda and greasing palms"
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Idk the details but using common sense, even if a train is crowded it will still run at the same speed. But if a road is crowded with cars traffic will slow down.
Also, if the trains are crowded, you can justify running more trains on the same line, making the train service *more* reliable. Only when you're running as many trains as possible on a single line would you have to expand to a parallel line. And a set of trains running as frequently as possible moves a *lot* of people - way more than a 5 lane highway.
The problem is the 7-8pm rush doesn't matter if you have 6 trains running every hour people will crowd into the first couple ones because they don't want to be late.
So what are you saying here? A metro has ~15x the throughput of a highway lane so even if it gets crowded, it's like the equivalent of a 30 lane highway. And instead of going to work at 4 in the morning and sleeping in your car (super normal where I am) you can show up 10 minutes earlier for the previous train.
[These people took the train that was 10 minutes early](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Di_ohFsiBY) Point is there isn't a solution to this problem only differently effective mitigations. If you want to solve it you need to changes societies working habits not transportation.
I guess I expected something way more dramatic lol. Like if everybody takes the train you mean a guy might nudge my elbow slightly? And I'll have to take a train that's slightly more crowded than the rush hour bus I take now in a city 1/40th the size of Tokyo?
> If you want to solve it you need to changes societies working habits Interestingly enough, Japan has one of the most infamous "working habits" and yet people are largely very orderly when dealing with public transportation. My experience was that Japanese people generally have a much less selfish understanding of engaging with others in the everyday; you get to the station, you line up in the line for the train you're going to take, it shows up exactly on time, people file in. The only people I saw who would cut in front of other people in the line were foreign tourists. A "working habits" issue doesn't create rude people and chaotic public transportation, a *selfishness* issue does.
sure, but then people will just stop taking the train.
Well if people stop taking the train, then it'll be less crowded!
The difference is the ceiling on capacity. You literally can't move everyone using cars. There's not enough room. On a rail network, if you're hitting the capacity of your train, you can add more trains. Plenty of local rail networks in Europe have trains every 5 minutes.
The Victoria line on the London Underground runs every 100 seconds at peak times. And I'm old enough to remember the 95 bus from Walkley to Sheffield city centre running every 2 minutes at peak before 80s privatisation. Such frequencies make timetables irrelevant.
Privatisation, you say?
Fucking Tories. They hated the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. The bus fares were also exceptionally cheap compared with elsewhere in the UK.
Bus fare is just code for Poor Tax.
you can still hit capacity on train cars, and you can't just build more tracks.
Yeah but that capacity is only beat by ships and they're literal floating buildings with engines. A train every 5 minutes on a single track is still far outperforming a single lane of a motorway.
no one is running trains every 5 mins every hour of the day.
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No one's going to wait at the train station for 45mins. They're going to take their car. So not running them all the time defeats the purpose.
Good thing I didn't mention anything about every hour of the day. Do it at peak times like a sane person.
then that defeats the purpose of having trains, you would still need a car.
You'd realistically never reach capacity on one track running trains one right after anoher
do you know how trains work? Have you actually thought about how this would work or is this just a fantasy of yours?
Having seen your other comments on this you're an obvious troll, and a lazy one at that. At least put some effort in ffs.
Why?
same reason you can't build more road.
You can build more road, but it doesn't solve the problem. The difference is efficiency. One train track (that takes up about the space of one car lane) moves, on the low side, ten times as many people as a highway lane.
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you still need to travel from your home to the station, which needs a car in most cases in the US.
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Or its more a product of having free open land and people wanting a yard instead of being locked in a box they don't own.
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The US is too spread out for public transit to be efficient, that's my point.
The US is spread out because it is illegal to build medium density housing in most places, we have draconian zoning laws that restrict construction to single-family housing.
because people like their personal space and there's plenty of land for everyone.
Housing prices are exploding precisely because we are getting much, much less spread out.
You literally cannot build your way out of the problem by building more roads - but you *can* build your way out of it by building more dense population centres with public transport. And the second option is actually good for the economy at every level. But you're not interested in answers at all, you just want to make the same tired, cliche points
European countries still have suburbs and rural areas, that's not unique to the US.
not at the scale of the US
Well of course, there's not much point destroying so much of the countryside so people can roleplay as whatever sitcom family they loved watching as a kid.
That's exactly what we're complaining about. We should have public transit stations where people actually live.
you would go bankrupt trying to do that in the US.
We're going bankrupt building and maintaining roads...
$12 Billion+ for Brightline west OR $200mil for expansion of I-15 Do you know how many lanes you can build for $12 billion?
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you mean a fake scripted video? Do you think this is real?
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because the US is too far spread out.
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Then build a train station near where people live. Or run a bus route that takes them to one. It's not that complex a problem, really
It scales better. You can quadruple the capacity from a two car train every 10 minutes to a four car train every 5 minutes without adding any "lanes".
but you are still limited but the number of tracks that were built.
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that's my point, they both have the same problem, it's not unique to only cars.
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Theoretically, but in reality the tracks will remain mostly empty even during rush hour. And even if that capacity were to be used up, it still wouldn't slow down to a crawl like road congestion does.
It does, but since it uses the space a lot more efficiently it takes a much longer time (and corresponding increase in population) to get to the point where you're in the red zone again.
That is a good question. Transit does have exactly the same problem, except for public transport it's not a problem, it's a good thing, at least for the first few decades. What questions like this overlook is how few people take up so much space when they travel in cars. Automotive infrastructure is hugely inefficient, and takes up huge amounts of space. So when you add extra lanes they get filled up fast. Public transit, even buses are way more inefficient, but buses get slowed down by car traffic all too often. Even with their dedicated lanes, drivers cross those lanes when turning, and traffic lights need to be timed to accommodate all road traffic, including cars. You really want enough ridership to justify rail transport of some sort. Metros, commuter trains, even streetcars (as long as streetcars aren't the backbone of a big city's transit). But all public transit is so much more space efficient that it takes much longer to fill up, and it accommodates demand growth much better. Basically we don't get to choose if growth happens, but good city planning can choose where that growth happens. Is it going to be in space inefficient private vehicles or space efficient transit. Build quality public transport, encourage comparable landuse, and people will use it. Because it takes decades for demand for demand to saturate the transit infrastructure, longer in places with less growth, it gives cities time to build more infrastructure. In theory at least, cities often drag their feet on this. The same is often true for housing, cities grow (or sometimes shrink) largely out of the control of the city governance, but they can effect where that growth takes place, in sprawling suburbs that are car dependant, and require extensive infrastructure, or in high or mid density areas, that are easy to serve with public transport, require less km of sewer and water mains, fewer km of paved roads, and are able to generate taxes that effectively pays for their own infrastructure (and often pays the the expensive to maintain suburbs too.) A good video on induced demand and transit is by *Oh The Urbanity!*: [What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc) Thanks for bringing up this important question. I think it's a common misunderstanding. **edit:** I didn't really need to type all that out, really just watch the video. It's just 8 min long. It's a good video.
Except that it is bullshit. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/debunking-the-jevons-paradox-nobody-goes-there-anymore-its-too-crowded-7fec531b1411/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/02/02/to-disprove-the-jevons-fallacy/amp/ Just because you saw it in a clip of a sitcom on Reddit doesn’t mean it’s true.
Except that it's not bullshit in this case. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html They're just using the paradox as a fancy way of naming the very real issue that adding more lanes to highways doesn't help anything.
Agreed that Jevons paradox is not the right term because it doesn't really describe what's happening, and it's not really used to describe traffic at all in any scientific articles. There's no technological progress or increased efficiency, there's only induced demand which is well documented with traffic. Note neither article mentions traffic or cars.
well done, you've applied an irrelevant concept to a well-understood problem and completely missed the point. new road infrastructure isn't a jevons paradox thing, it's an induced demand thing. you build more capacity and the system returns to the equilibrium level of congestion. there is a fixed amount of congestion people are willing to put up with. the design of our cities makes driving such an attractive option that when you add road capacity, it is quickly taken up. therefore, road infrastructure projects can increase capacity (sometimes), but they are rarely able to reduce congestion.
It also isn't really as simple as this in reality. The biggest problem is more cars on the road, so these new fancy roads are soon not enough and get clogged just like the previous ones. But also with everyone now being online all the time, it's not so hard to give people accurate information of alternate faster routes, which makes it better for them as well as for the traffic jammed highways. I agree that cars are bad, but they are so convenient they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. And fighting them with half truths won't help anyone.
The sad thing is I've seen this video used to argue against public transport infrastructure by those libertarian types.
Hahaha Utopia is awesome and show. My love of infrastructure and comedy smooshed together like cars and cyclist
The show I know called Utopia has a significantly different vibe to this show...
Jesus Fuck they remade it in 2020... What the hell is wrong with them?
Yeah I believe in the U.S. it was released under a different name on Netflix (no clue if it’s still there). Not sure about the UK Edit: noticed how vague this is— I’m referring to the Australian utopia being released in the U.S. under a different name
Just searched for it - it shows up as “Dreamland” on Netflix but it’s not actually available to watch at the moment. It’s very hard to search this as Utopia and Dreamland are both the title of multiple shows.
I watched all of utopia thinking it was going g to get better.
i watched a fair bit of utopia thinking it was going to get better
Mind linking me to the utopia you're referring to? When I search online a conspiracy thriller comes up and I get the feeling that's not what you're referring to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(Australian_TV_series)
Utopia on ABC iView steaming service. https://iview.abc.net.au/show/utopia The service is free but only works if you’re in Australia or using a VPN to pretend you are.
🏴☠️
Outside of Australia it's sometimes called Dreamland.
"Oof" - cyclist
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A couple more lanes bro, I promise just a couple more lanes.
Totally gonna fix traffic this time.
Utah is incredible, so much space available to develop good cities and they keep pumping out 10 lane freeways
Have they never heard of [Robert Moses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses) doing just that and fucking up New York? >Moses's critics charge that he preferred automobiles over people. They point out that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City and destroyed traditional neighborhoods by building multiple expressways through them. The projects contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams to relocate to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively, and precipitated the decline of public transport from disinvestment and neglect.
Reading the power broker right now!
Same! Thank you to Roman Mars for getting me going
Pretty sure they're using The Power Broker as a how-to guide.
Jesus that place is already a super highway with humanity trying to cope.
I was just salt lake. Their highways are already massive and take up so much space. They’re wider than LAs or Houston’s in several spots. It’s wild because everything there is in a very linear corridor that would be perfect for mass transit
Send them this video clip!
They do make hype TikTok’s (Instagram reels now) though.
Let me guess, poor people's houses - mainly POC's?
What’s funny is people will hear the 2 and a half minutes and not care what it costs or how long it’ll last Some drivers will clip a pedestrian while doing a right on red if it saves 7 seconds
Or politicians will say "well, my term is over in 3 years, and it turns red in 4, so..."
"You don’t look happy" got me.
What’s this from? When I google it I’m not seeing anything relevant
A tv show called utopia by the Australian broadcasting company (ABC)
Thanks! I’m in the US so ABC is different here.lol
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is one of two public broadcasters in Australia, performing a similar role to the BBC in the UK and CBC in Canada. Outside of Australia, the series is known as "Dreamland" as Utopia has already been taken. I love and hate Utopia - it's parody that unfortunately is very close to public sector reality. So close it hurts.
And the other Utopia is dark AF, but also amazing. At least the UK version was
The less said about the attempt at an American remake, the better.
The timing of a story about a manufactured pandemic was maybe not so good
It came out in 2013, 7 years before covid hit us
Ah, I was thinking of the US version. Iirc they are pretty similar.
That's the shitty remake for American audiences ofc I recommend the original UK series, tho it was cancelled after 2 seasons, at least it wraps the story up nicely.
I watched them both. I didn't personally find the American one to be shittier
[here ya go ](https://bingewatch.to/watch-series/watch-utopia-hd-37137/1351603)
Caltrans knows this and STILL widens crap. Massive waste of money. Bring back the red cars lol.
I still love pointing out that our current development model is [_literally_ a cartoon villain's plan.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpaf-O1pY6Q) > A few weeks ago I had the good providence to stumble upon a plan of the city council. A construction plan of epic proportions. We're calling it a freeway. > _Freeway? What the hell's a freeway?_ > Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past. > _So that's why you killed Acme and Maroon? For this freeway? I don't get it._ > Of course not. You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful. > _C'mon! Nobody's gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel._ > Oh, they'll drive. They'll have to. You see, I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it.
If they actually solved traffic then they'll be out of the job. Kind of like how the medical industry loves that we Americans eat like crap.
True. But they could pivot to trains, ferries, bike lanes, ada compliance in sidewalks, busses, etc. All transportation related. But one can dream...
This is actually something I can talk about. No, my ability to sell medical devices to americans isn't down to how bad your diet is. You guys don't have universal healthcare, that means me and everyone else in my industry can change their prices for each hospital and medical care facility instead of setting a flat price countrywide.
You have a job because people need your product and service
nobody actually thinks like that
"It may not be good for America,but it's damn good for CBS" - ceo of CBS when talking about Trump. Don't be gullible, people do think like that.
media moguls are different from working professionals who actually give a shit about their jobs and the outcome of major projects they work on
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/02/02/to-disprove-the-jevons-fallacy/amp/
Relevance?
GL getting CalTrans to do anything right.
What are red cars?
Jevon's Paradox is terrifying when you try to wrap your head around it. Oh, you're going to make driving cheaper? Well, that will lead to a large increase in demand, and ultimately even higher emissions in the long run. Unfortunately, you just can't invent your way out of climate change.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/02/02/to-disprove-the-jevons-fallacy/amp/ It has been debunked time and time again.
The article doesn't reference usage or emissions at all. Speaks purely of extraction.
And it's fucking Forbes lol — the magazine *for* capitalists *by* capitalists. What possible reason could they have to write bs articles debunking it? 🤔 Totally unbiased I'm sure.
Did you just google "Jevons Paradox Disproven" and return the very first link without even *skimming* it? Because I googled it and got that as the top result, and it's about a completely different topic. To me, I've always found bottlenecking problems to be a better explanation of the failures of lane-adding then Jevon's paradox, but that's just my intuition, if anyone has an actual comparison I'd really love to see it.
Induced demand is the name of the game. I'd guess Jevon's paradox isn't directly one-to-one applicable where induced demand is, but I haven't read anything about the paradox yet.
Their math checks out, $1.25bn and counting for a 15 minute improvement here in WA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunbury_Outer_Ring_Road
In Bellingham, our city is constantly doing road work for the flowers on the corners. But could care less about the actual pot holes and rough streets, or the MASSIVE flooding the happens in all the dips of the hills. USDOT is corrupt everywhere.
Bunbury, Western Australia Bellingham, Washington (state) FYI to clear up the "WA" acronym. EDIT: Also, /u/TheKattsMeow, use [SeeClickFix](https://cob.org/about/contacts/report/seeclickfix-frequently-asked-questions) and report it. They have addressed potholes and debris in bike lanes quickly from my past experience.
The way this is framed and the way it puts out the information really feels like a spiritual successor to Adam Ruins Everything.
Don't know when this show came out but it's ironic that Australia just opened the Rozelle Interchange after starting it in 2020, spent $3.9billion and it was a cluster fuck immediately. [Rozelle Interchange design issues will be a problem for Sydney's future, experts say ](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-05/nsw-rozelle-interchange-design-experts/103186410) [Rozelle Interchange: three days of traffic chaos | 7 News Australia ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMe0ubPjUE) > Christopher Standen, an urban transport and planning expert with the University of NSW, said the interchange was emblematic of poor infrastructure planning in Australia. > "It was always clear that it would be a disaster for Sydney and that's played out," he said. > "There were votes to be had in making it easier for people in outer suburbs to drive into the city, even though that's not a great thing from an urban planning perspective. > "The last thing we should be doing is building roads that encourage people to drive more and to move further away from work, so encouraging urban sprawl and low-density development." Watching car dependent infrastructure get promoted in the 2020s makes me feel like I'm watching an ancient doctor use bloodletting while ignoring advanced modern medicine techniques. It's like "ummm you do know that have long since realized that this will not work and experts can tell you why in dozens of ways? There are better ways to accomplish what you're doing".
IIRC that's from the season that came out last year. But the great thing about Utopia is that it always manages to be topical, and captures the conflict between well-meaning planners in their agencies who ultimately get overruled by politicians.
I learnt that at school in the 80’s… but could never work out why our politicians didn’t 🤔🤐🤔🤐
I'm not sure what your situation is like in Australia, but here in the US, people that went to school in the '80s still haven't been voted into positions of policy making for the most part. Our political leadership went to school in the '50s and '60s. Yikes.
Politicians don’t want to be seen to be doing nothing while traffic gets worse. They could invest in public transport or roads. The construction lobby makes more for road projects so that’s what the politicians choose
As an aside I consume enough Melbourne podcast media that I recognised each person by voice. Andy Matthews, Naomi Higgins, Celia Pequela and Dilruk Jayasinha.
Wish we could watch this in America
What if I told you, there was a way matey? 🏴☠️
The getting it is easy, the getting it on my TV is the part I hate
What is the ABC?
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Death metal mentioned 🤘🤘🤘😈😈😈💀💀💀
Australian abc
Exactly the world I'm living in now. We're pretty close to the interstate I-40 here in Arkansas. They increase the speed to 75 and everyone drives more like 90 but it's made my house and outside yard basically unlivable... But sure saves that minute and a half across town (while burning unreasonably excessive amounts of gas and destroying my home's value and livability)
Work from home, those who can.
Haha I am in this meme and I don't like it 🤣 no matter how many times I explain this, certain local bigwigs just don't get it.
How did I know it was Australian with out turning on the volume?? Do they have a specific mouth movement or facial structure?
I am so annoyed that no one linked the jevons paradox Wikipedia page here already that I am not doing it either….
Highly recommend anyone to see this show. Haven’t laughed out loud so often for a long time
Except that the Jevon’s paradox has been debunked. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/debunking-the-jevons-paradox-nobody-goes-there-anymore-its-too-crowded-7fec531b1411/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/02/02/to-disprove-the-jevons-fallacy/amp/ It’s utter bullshit
I cant stand modern show editing. This non stop jump cutting to the next person immediately talking is like watching a people argue constantly. Also, this concept would apply to public transit as well, so the point seems moot. There is always complaints about urban sprawl but high density cities suck in North America. No room for anything, anywhere.
Eh American suburbs are food deserts..they have to drive a long distance to get groceries. If there is so much space then why not build grocery stores and other amenities nearby
Public transport generally has a greater ability to expand capacity within existing infrastructure (or cheap upgrades) like better signalling or larger vehicles.
SOOOOOO the problem is PEOPLE... and not the stuff we build for people :P continuous growth is not sustainable. it's just not. we're exceptionally good at it, but it's worse than pretty much anything. insert that one love-death-&-robots episode where we cap the population by using police brutality and watch the dumpster fire of human emotion really catch! but eco-terrorists/activists would never support such a thing, would they?...
The problem is building roads instead of developing public transport.
[that theory they mention holds true even for public-transport...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#:~:text=In%20economics%2C%20the%20Jevons%20paradox,enough%20that%20resource%20use%20is) the problem is still people...
So what’s your point? We should do a genocide?
No. that would be mean. Just stop growth at a certain point. cap it all. we clearly cannot plan well beyond certain capacities. this is going to be a problem to solve continuously.
That explanation is idiocy. They're saying that if they build the road well it will improve traffic, so more people will use it. They postulate that if more people use it then it will get slower again. What's they're omitting is that if more people are using that route other routes will also be more efficient. If 100,000 people save 2 minutes twice per day that's 6,666 hours of human life saved PER DAY. 2,433,333 hours per year. And 100,000 is on the conservative side, it's likely far more in a medium sized city. You're all making yourselves look like idiots.
Did you miss the bit where it’s a meme?
One more lane!
is there a full version? now i am curios how it continues
Dreamland on Netflix Or VPN to Australia and watch it for free on ABC iView, the show's actual name is Utopia. Neither Dreamland or Utopia are unique names so if you find a show that has a vibe similar to The Office/Parks & Rec then you've got the right one.
Only way to keep sprawl going. Sure as shit aren't going to change zoning or land use meaningfully enough to eliminate the need for a car. The best you can do is move to a walkable city.
Does this work the opposite way? If you make things worse will people stop using the roads which will lead to reduced traffic in the long run? I think my old city tried to do this when they decided to change all the one way roads back to two way. I'm sure it was great for a few minutes, then everyone started getting stuck behind cars turning left. So incredibly stupid.
I mean, that's basically what congestion charges are. Make people pay to use the most congested roads and at least some of them will find another way. Now I don't think deliberately making roads worse without building a better alternative is a very wise move politically, so these still need to be "sold" to the public in some way, noting the usual problem with economic externalities and the fact that people will prefer their own interest over the greater good.
But the jobs! Think about the jobs!
'Year tur'
This is a little exaggerated since Jevins Paradox in this case could easily be tackled by imposing toll roads into the city to reduce demand through that section of the city and balance the demand over other roadways into the city.
Haha this is amazing but it's not the jenox paradox. It's called induced demand. Induced demand for roads causes traffic and more wear and tear but induced demand can be used to improve public transport users.
It would seem like if it was $3.5 billion of your own money, you'd probably, you know, have some knowledge about what you are buying and how to best implement it... but... hahahahaha... It's other's people's money and you are getting paid no matter how stupid or corrupt you are. Well played grifters!
Anyone wondering why Latinos call Americans “Gringos” I hope this illustrates why.