Natural experiment in Induced Demand: I-95 closure in Philadelphia

Quote:

On Sunday June 11, a tanker truck caught fire on I-95 and the intense heat caused a section of the freeway to collapse. I-95 is one of the nation’s principal north-south connections, and carries 160,000 vehicles per day. It’s expected that repairs to the roadway could take months. What would commuters and travelers do without this vital chunk of roadway? Surely, we’re headed for gridlock and carmageddon! But on Monday morning, despite some localized delays, pretty much nothing out of the ordinary happened. Local TV station NBC10’s chyron shouted “COMMUTER CHAOS,” but their reporter actually found that traffic was mostly, moving steadily:

The article is short so I won't just quote the entire thing, but here's the conclusion:

Quote:

The repeated failure of these predicted “carmageddons” to ever occur is powerful evidence that the key tenet of highway planning is fundamentally flawed. Highway departments claim that if we don’t build more roadways, traffic and congestion will increase without limit and we’ll face hours and hours of delay. In reality, that never happens because people adapt their travel behavior to the available transportation system. Widening roads in an effort to reduce congestion isn’t simply futile, its counterproductive. More capacity generates more travel, more sprawl, more pollution, and ultimately more congestion. It’s time to get off this treadmill.

https://cityobservatory.org/carmagge...lphia-edition/


So where do all these people go if they're not sitting in traffic honking their horns?

Quote:

The three SEPTA Regional Rail Lines most closely paralleling Interstate 95 saw a 12% increase in ridership on Monday, the first day the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority offered increased service and capacity following Sunday’s collapse of a bridge on I-95. WHYY Radio reports ridership on the Trenton, West Trenton, and Fox Chase lines was 5,182, compared to 4,635 the previous Monday, June 5. Most of the increase came on the Trenton line (up 277, or 13%) and West Trenton line (up 231, or 14%).

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-revi...idge-collapse/

Seems we're witnessing a natural experiment in city planning and the effects of induced demand on whether people decide to travel via car or public transit.

US style sprawl and soul-killing car congestion is not destiny, it's a choice made by city planners who keep increasing car infrastructure and inducing more demand rather than prioritizing more efficient solutions.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/m2OaMEs