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I was thinking about induced demand, and I wondered why the argument as it's made against cars/the expansion of highways isn't also applied to things like busses. Does it not occur to the same extent?

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[-] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The induced demand part involves a cycle of expanding roadways and then building detached housing to use that roadway.

This would happen with buses, trams and bikes as well but for them the matching housing is a high-density urban fabric, and this is much more frequently blocked by zoning than detached houses. So we get essentially housing crises with incredible prices for quality urban areas as the demand is pretty huge, and some absolutely jam-packed bus and train routes, but following up on that is politically much harder than destroying some farmland or nature area to build suburbs.

  • If traffic is bad then it's treated as a problem that must be solved
  • If transit is packed like sardines then it's often ignored
  • If housing that enables a low-car lifestyle is incredibly scarce and expensive it gets waved off with stuff like "it's not a human right to live in the city" or "but a big building will cast a shadow on my lawn!"
[-] dillekant@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 weeks ago

I watched a Youtube video about this, and yeah, induced demand affects everything, but when it affects Buses, you get more buses, and that's more efficient. When it affects Trains, you get more trains, and that's more efficient. The only time it gets less efficient is when it affects cars. The moral of the story was: It wasn't the Induced Demand, it was the Cars that were the problem.

this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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