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Comment by beaviskhan | Hacker News Reader

In my small town, we approve apartment complexes without doing anything to accommodate the additional traffic they inevitably generate (in a small town that already has significant traffic problems and very little public transportation). The fight to deny these permits is warranted, in my opinion, until they're handled more appropriately.

Unfortunately it's an exceedingly complicated problem since a number of the main roads through town are actually US/state highways and as such, modifications require coordination between local, county, and state agencies, and often involve almost unbelievable lead times.

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Traffic is subject to induced demand. Roads fill until traffic is high enough to convince people not to drive (either taking fewer trips or going via not car). If you build more roads, more people will drive until traffic is bad enough to get them not to, etc. etc.

We have nearly a century of data on this. It was observed when Robert Moses tried to build more parkways in New York, it was true in Texas and LA, it was true everywhere.

"Traffic is already bad" is a common NIMBY line in my area, but traffic will always be bad with sufficient population. Building more roads will not change that.

Why doesn't this apply to public transport too? Is there no point running more buses or trains because they'd just fill up again? And shouldn't this mean all roads should be packed all the time, rather than having many which are always fairly quiet, even in rush hour?

The capacity and throughout of public transit is dramatically higher and scales far better, so it's harder to hit limits and cheaper to scale them up.

Yes, it's technically affected - both in the "if you build it they will come" sense and that if transit becomes sufficiently congested people will change their transportation behavior - but cars have more liquidity and hit traffic limits much easier.

You can believe that the fight is warranted if you want. I post to point out that this isn't just city people trying to impose preferences on the suburbs.

The university that dominates my college town does not give a fuck about housing or infrastructure support. They are growing enrollment regardless. The kids who have to drive to campus rather than take the bus because there isn't enough housing within bus route distance are a pretty big problem for congestion.

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