Induced demand is the idea that if doing X is a miserable experience due to too many people wanting to do X, then improving the experience will induce more people to want to do X so upgrading the infrastructure need to account for all the people that currently are giving up but start X-ing once it get marginally better.
In a vicious cycle of congestion -> upgrades -> congestion again.
The implication is that often rather than scaling X you are better off finding a different path that suffer less congestion, as is the case with car travel.
Induced demand of non-scarce resource is just growth.
A nice channel that focus on what other priorities could look like is
https://www.youtube.com/NotJustBikes
A recent viral videos it recently made focuses why approaches that are complementary to suburban sprawl and high speed roads are necessary in North America (where I am assuming you are from).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
Another resource that might resonate with people theorizes why fatal car crashes went up since in the last couple years.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/1/10/driving-went-d...
I live in a different continent, but I am quite passionate about the topic and I believe that most people are good actors that want a better world around them. Egoistically I hope these material might change someone opinion on what that better world looks like.
The economics term "elasticity of demand" is probably older, has a very similar meaning, broader application, and a clearer definition.
I'd argue that most of the time in the case of road networks the demand isn't even induced; it's not even elastic! It's already there, there's just no supply for it. At least in the short term - you might have an actual increase in demand over decades as a city/region grows.
This is the case if those people do not take alternative form of travel, a single subway can take hundreds of cars off the street, even in car-centric suburban hellscape (I am showing my bias here) there are secondary longer routes.
In terms of congestion demand is very path-specific.
I think there is a change in focus, daily car trips are elastic in gas/toll prices and induced by lack of congestion.
I would personally reserve that for the folks who actually study the problem space, but whatevs.
>"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""
>"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
The popular approach on this site to allow anyone with unstudied and naive assumptions of how the world works freedom to dismiss these concerns should be shunned, derisively if necessary.
If the thoughts and views of non-experts are worthless (or harmful) in a causal setting (here), why should they be permitted to express them in a consequential environment (voting)?
The validation of meritoric side of comments on this site is on You as a reader. If You pay attention to what You read its quite easy to tell the difference between someone who knows what he's talking about and a contrarian who wants just to talk about meta topics on shallow level.
Increasing internet bandwidth and speed for consumers induces demand, like more and higher quality streaming services.
The basic idea of "if you build it, they will come" is the same as "induced demand", but with different words. "Induced demand" though has been used lately though when you need to say:
No, you can't just 'more infrastructure' your way out of a problem of high utilization, since utilization will probably rise to meet new availability.