7:51 Another reason why this argument falls apart. In the absence of cars ideally one can walk, cycle, ride the bus or metro... But in the absence of built housing, people have no alternative - they'd be homeless!
The comment makes sense if you don’t look at it literally, I wouldn’t say the comment is saying cars are nice same as houses are meaning that even if sometimes it’s hard cars are useful
induced demand for housing definitely exists. if housing were cheaper, more people would move out of living with their families earlier, more people would live alone and not with roommates, and more couples would start having kids earlier. which are all things society considers as positive outcomes.
similarly, people that drive on new roads enjoy some benefit from it, otherwise they wouldn't do it! it's the social costs of the new roads (pollution, less space for other things, etc) that we don't want
More people would also feel a greater degree of alienation, more elderly would be left to fend for themselves, more energy and resources would be required to maintain and build said resources, a higher need for transportation would be created etc.
No, society does not consider those good outcomes. Society comes up with the flimsiest excuses to make them impossible to achieve. Commuting is a virtue.
@@SweBeach2023 Regarding alienation - the young people I talk to feel alienated because they can't invite their friends around to their parent's house easily, so they can only socialise by going out, which can be expensive. If they could afford to move out, preferably into a flat with a couple of friends, they would be much more socially connected and build better social skills.
@@SweBeach2023counterpoint to you and @hylje is that with cheaper high density housing it would be much easier for extended families and friends to afford to live near each other. Easier to still move out of your parent’s attic but still walk 10 minutes over for Sunday dinner or babysitting. It’s easier to have the quiet and luxury of having a 1 bedroom but meet your friends within 20 minutes walk at a bar without worrying about driving. If diverse housing was available and cheap, it would be easier for elderly empty nesters to downsize from their large house. They wouldn’t be pinned down by the necessity of holding onto their house(land) shaped retirement investment and the lack of options to be near their existing community. I think many people would still be alienated because Industrial/post-Industrial capitalism just does that, plus algorithmic digital media. But I think reversing the trend of physical isolation/stuck-ness would probably help.
Transportation and housing can be looked at the same way. We need more high capacity solutions. This applies to transportation (less cars and more trains, buses, and bike infrastructure) and housing (less single-family homes and more duplexes, apartments, and condos).
Yes, and the entire reason that cars aren't a viable solution to transportation in cities is that they are inherently low capacity. Induced demand is a problem for cars because cars are inefficient and cannot scale to high capacities. Induced demand is not a problem for public transport and bikes because those _are_ highly efficient and can easily be scaled up.
The condo market is dead. We haven't built any substantial amount of them in Calgary in a decade, due to oversupply, and now Toronto is facing the same issues. Condo sales are overwhelmingly driven by investors, and they are a bad investment now, with declining valuations and many months worth of inventory just lying around. If I look around me, prices have exploded for single family, townhouses, and duplexes, and people are still buying those. Few people want to buy condos anymore, and nobody wants to build them.
Its mostly because its harder to sell condos 25 years doan the line when compared to single family houses, since you can still sell the land even if the house has rotted away. The problem circles again to housing being used as an investment
Private cars are the detached single family houses of transpiration. Desired and luxurious, but so inefficient spatially that they should be avoided in urban areas.
This is a very good point. I also thought that cars : single-family detached houses buses : duplexes & town houses trains : apartments & condos and thus the "just build more lanes" wouldn't solve traffic, just as "just build more single-family houses" wouldn't solve housing. And as far as I am aware of, not a single urbanist channel says cities should build more single-family detached houses. They all wanted multi-family housings, which is consistent with their advocacy of public transit (based on the above analogy)
Hello, I wanted to comment that this video felt like a missed opportunity to talk about public goods. What you were describing was similar to the issues with public goods, but without the framework we have to describe them and how housing is not one. In economics, public goods are goods and services which are both non rivalrous and non excludable. Roads are common-pool good, meaning they are rivalrous but non excludable, thats why they tend to be overconsumed (that is what congestion is). Housing on the other hand is a complety private good, meaning it is rivalrous (my consumption of my house means someone else misses out on the house) and excludable (I can close the door to my house and prevent people from using it) which is why it doesn't suffer from induced demand. Public goods are usually an economic argument for state intervention and tolls on highways are a measure to make roads excludable, to "combat" overconsumption. Hope you find it useful and I suggest reading about public goods, as I think they are key to understanding things like transport and cities in general.
That's a great introduction to the concept of public goods, thank you. Are you willing to share any authors or books on the topic you feel helped illuminate it?
Public goods is indeed a good point. But this has nothing to do with induced demand and a lot more that the winning strategy with respect to public goods is to behave like a douchebag. You will reap more of the good, while the costs will be spread to everyone. This is why the commons of old (and still in many developing countries) suffer from overgrazing. However, driving does not really work like that. You get the same end result (going from A to B) and there are substantial costs on driving, both immediate and visible, and some less so. People may be able to ignore the cost for depreciation, but time is a cost as well and very visible. If something takes 20 minutes by car and 10 by bike, only few people will drive. The issue is that reality is quite the contrary. Driving, even with traffic, is often by far the fastest option. Not just in the US, in most of Europe as well. Moreover, driving is often much safer than mixing with cars. Not just in cities, but especially in rural areas. Urbanists love to talk about how biking at an arterial is bad...now imagine biking on a rural road with cars coming from behind at 100-120km/h...
I personally things motorways should all be privatised as then they are private goods and the benefits will pay off the negatives or the company will go bankrupt, this means we would still have motorways but they would make money rather than cost money
@@rhysrail This might work for highways and at larger cities. But it definitely will not work in small towns and rural areas. There are simply not enough drivers to make a privatized road work at somewhat reasonable prices. Keep in mind that people in rural areas already have very high cost for mobility, as they do actually rely on the car. Given the distances (though that can be alleviated a bit with electric bikes) and the lack of safe cycling infrastructure, there are little alternatives to driving. Transit also does not work if there are only few people.
In the United States maybe induced demand does apply to housing, because 75% of land is zoned for single family detached houses (low capacity/difficult to expand) and mortgages are subsidized/guaranteed/have tax benefits (not "free," but they price is highly distorted).
And roads are built to open more land to development, or were. Now it's the roads are expanded to catch up to the development which only encourages more developments further out!
I wonder if it is because single family detached houses (often single story) with gardens are more popular among families with children than other housing options.
@@Myrtone No: because if it was by demand, building multi-family housing would not be illegal. Racism plays a part in it. Readlining was used to enable the "white flight" to the suburbs, while at the same time preventing Black families from owning their own homes.
@Myrtone If it was so popular they would still be predominant even with more relaxed rules about what you could build. Right now they are "popular" because everything else is illegal on 75% of land.
Ottawa did used to have massive rush hour congestion with almost entirely buses downtown, but the LRT basically fixed that, as full of problems as it is
What? OC transport ridership is down from pre-pandemic levels due to it's unreliability. With the governments back to office mandate has caused a ton of congestion on the 417 both ways, the O-train didn't fix Ottawa's congestion WFH did.
@@gibusgaming you’ve never been stuck on a bus moving through centretown on Slater or Albert in rush hour pre-LRT and it shows. The LRT literally DID solve the specific problem of buses converging & clogging in Centretown even if its reliability is dubious & its servicing pattern is questionable.
@@Sam-w5v That is cool I do too. I’m dear near 500hp and will be over that with an intake a tune very soon I love doing pulls and driving a nice car. This does not mean every single time I want to get out my house I have to contribute to destroying the planet, and even if I get an electric car contribute to a process that is killing children who are mining for rare metals. In North American nearly all of our societies are based on public transit which has been demolished for highways. It is ok if you like driving because I do to we just have to not impose driving on nearly every individual in North America
The main difference is that people should be entitled to housing and transportation, regardless of how rich or poor they may be. People should not entitled to operate and store their private vehicle in public spaces, appropriating valuable land that could otherwise be used to build things that actually matter. It's all about priorities.
No bike racks or lanes at the expense of housing, no. But they take up so much less space that it's dramatically more practical to incorporate bike storage and lanes without costing your ability to build housing. You're right, most of the same basic logic of cars applies to bikes, with 3 key differences: Bikes take up so much less space that it is a tiny problem compared to car storage and transportation. You could turn every existing road into a bike road and every parking lot into a bike parking lot, and you'd have room to double the population of every city in America without running into serious congestion issues, because they need so much less space than cars Bikes weigh so much less that it's quite difficult to kill someone or seriously injure them in a collision. And they're so much smaller that it happens less often. And they barely damage roads compared to cars because they weigh so little, so they cause almost no physical harm to cities. Bikes don't cause noise or air pollution. So they don't harm human health either. They're a net benefit, if anything. Low impact cardio exercise. So, on the surface they're the same, but in practice they're dramatically different. It's like comparing a pet cat to a pet horse. You can draw some surface level comparisons and apply similar logic, but in practice they're very different.
@@kylejohnson6775 I literally agree on everything you mentioned. This is a video about housing and how “induced demand” doesn’t apply to it. Nobody is arguing about whether or not we need more bike infrastructure. Obviously we do. It’s part of the “transportation” we are all entitled to. We’re entitled to transportation, not to the storage of our personal property on public spaces. It’s obviously nice to have if we can afford it, but should never come at the expense of housing or public transportation. And of course bikes are way more flexible than cars and can fit more easily in public spaces. Again, why are we arguing?
The most expensive housing is in metro areas that are walkable, bikeable, and have good public transit, because there is not enough supply to meet demand.
Roads are an expense, buildings are revenue. If a city builds too many roads at the expense of buildings, then its revenues will decline. But unfortunately, in most N.A. cities the formula is for suburbanites to drive in and out of downtown areas for work or entertainment reasons, so if cities do not sacrifice buildings for roads, then businesses do not get the suburban traffic which they rely upon for increased revenue.
Ever heard of commuter rail? There are other, better ways to transport people from one place to another, at the same times five days a week, than by cars.
@@Greeniykyk You are making the mistake of applying logic to irrational thinking. For example, what sense does it make to drive to a bar, or spend two hours a day sitting in traffic? None, but try telling someone this is crazy, and you will likely get laughed at.
@@Alex-od7nl yeah sadly people are just to ignorant, theyll rather pay thousands of dollars in gas, insurance and maintenance a year just to be able to drive 3 miles everyday. Those people think that you want to abolish cars and force them into high rises but we want just a bit of change
Just build more lines! They are underground. Dont take parking spots. And you could push so many people into one train. I am talking about metro lines of course.
I think building codes need to stop being so prescriptive and restrictive. Let the market guide what needs to be built: that only works if you let that thing be built!
It wasn’t a misconception but rather a statement, personally I would say it was showing that just because things are more efficient than cars it doesn’t mean that cars are bad, and I wouldn’t say a response to that is to privatise motorways as then it is self balancing as with houses with you get what you choose to spend your money on
I keep hearing this brag about Toronto having the most cranes in the sky building endless condos, but the infrastructure is not keeping up. Driving around the city is so terrible right now that I've decided to permanently give up my car and use my bicycle as much as possible. It beats traffic and it beats TTC delays, emergencies and the dreaded short turn. I am the captain now.
I'm glad you found a better way! I don't think the condos with like 0.2 parking spaces per unit are the cause of the traffic lol. It might have something to do with the massive sea of single family homes with 2-3 cars each that has expanded a ton recently at the edges of the gta
@@nick2555v6 It's brilliant new buildings are being built with minimal parking now. I think all infrastructure is bad! I wasn't even thinking about the roads on that one. I live in an older building downtown that has a nearly empty 3 story parking garage and 0 bike racks.
And now Doug Ford has screwed you guys over, forcing you to put yourself in danger by having to compete with cars on the road or to put up with the daily crush on the TTC subway or infinite delays on the busses and streetcars that are stuck in auto traffic.
Private cars are the detached single family houses of transpiration. Desired and luxurious, but so inefficient spatially that they should be avoided in urban areas. Buses are townhouses. Trains are apartments.
The keyword here is "scalability". Increasing lanes in a high-way is tied to diminishing returns. Adding a lane in a highway that already has 2 will increase capacity by 33%. But a fourth will increase it by 25% and a fifth by only 20%. Assuming that the cost of adding a lane is the same each time then you run into a situation where adding relative capacity to a high-way becomes more and more expensive, aka diminishing returns. If you had a rail-corridor instead you could literally double capacity by doubling the amount of trains, this is tied to constant-returns instead. Not to mention the fact that adding more lanes is infinitely more complex and often much more expensive than buying trains. Developing transit or housing will also obviously lead to its own induced demand. The actual difference is that car travel doesn't scale up the same way.
It would probably decrease a lot faster than that. While it may be sensible to assume that adding each new lane simply adds a definitive amount of capacity (1500-1800 vehicles per hour) to the total capacity, in reality, people don't use all the lanes on a stupidly wide highway equally. People tend to bunch up on the lanes where there are onramps and offramps, and if the highway keeps getting widened, merging conflicts and lane changes get much much worse which makes capacity worse. Forcing cars to cross more lanes means worse traffic flow. But with public transit, capacity can be easily managed and is much more scalable. For example if a metro is running short 4 car trains, adding 2 carriages to make 6 car trains and increasing capacity by 50% doesn't come with the same capacity limits as cars merging across each other as it's way easier to get passengers to use all the carriages of the train compared to forcing drivers to use all lanes. And running trains more frequently actually helps metros to run more efficiently as platforms are cleared faster since there's less buildup of people waiting for a train.
the really insane thing is that some people have homes or apartments that greatly exceed their need simply because they can afford it and then fill it with additional crap they also don't need because they can afford that garbage. We have a huge problem in the developed countries with the idea that paying taxes is a bad thing or some kind of punishment, it should be viewed as a privilege, something you are honored to do because you live in a time and place where you are not beholden to the whims of a warlord or monarch and your excess wealth can be used to uplift those who do NOT have what you already do instead of surround yourself with a steady stream of baubles and trinkets, the overwhelming majority of which will end up in a trash heap decomposing back into the various components they were sourced from that is the modern day joke of futile consumerism
As someone who lives in a rural area, I would *love* to see effective congestion pricing. As it is, I just avoid cities completely, or accept that I'll need to waste time looking for parking & figuring out how to use an unfamiliar public transit system, or being stuck in traffic. Far more people would use buses if car-drivers couldn't externalize their costs, and with more bus-users, they could offer higher-frequency service.
Here in Stockholm we have congestion pricing for the inner city. Pretty much everyone outside were against it, and people inside were for it. Thankfully, the government listened to the people who actually live in the affected area. And now it brings in a good amount of money that's used for metro expansions, a road around the city, and other things.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The price of continue building more highways to accommodate suburbanites who don't work where they live is more congestion and heavier tax burden to maintain those roads in the future. ask yourself, how does a suburbanite get to ttc? how much worst congestion will be when hybrid or remote work return to the office...doesn't the abandoned food courts in downtown toronto offers an indication of the potential? more insanity?
There is a point to applying induced demand to housing if you focus on the major cities. Increased availability paired with general urbanisation will attract more people to key cities and thus perpetuate the problem. Increasing availability will increase demand in the major cities, because in the post-industrial age a lot of people want to move to the major cities for white-collar work opportunities, cultural iife etc. The arrival of these people itself creates new job opportunities, and makes the city more appealing culturally etc., and thus there's a feedback loop, and "the beast" grows larger. And the larger it is, the more of a pull it has. I dubbed it the "metropolitan effect" in an article I wrote about it, based on a study made at the London School of Economics about how increasing supply also increases demand (which I have forgotten the name of, I'm afraid).
That effect can also introduce political distortions, where the urban majority loses legislative chambers to the rural minority. Urbanites wind up in a small number of compact districts that they win by overwhelming margins, while rural dwellers are spread out in more districts that they win by smaller, but still decisive margins. It's even worse in the US, where partisan mapmaking for state legislatures and the US House of Representatives can lock in these trends, and the Senate gives equal representation to all states regardless of population.
My understanding of his point is that we need to 'stop applying induced demand to house...' _as an argument to reject more, various and high density housing._ Yes, if a city continuously improves and prospers, then yes, more folks will want to live there.
It’s all tied to car culture and the illusion that cars are a ticket to freedom (freedom to be tied to a depreciating asset, freedom to need parking, freedom to be stuck in traffic, etc.) The younger generation isn’t enamoured with personal car ownership the way we GenX and Boomers were. I think car culture may finally be due for a significant decline over the next 20 years.
Cars are still freedom. Today I went to buy 50 kg of concrete. Please tell me the best way to do it if not by car? Too far/heavy to transport using bike or public transport. Not sure if any taxi would accept sacks of concrete as luggage or me dressed in a very dirty overall as a customer. Having it shipped? Sure, if it wasn't for the fact I yesterday didn't know I needed it today.
@ Seriously? You call the building supply store and get it delivered. They use their own truck and drop it off at your door, same day. I have a 3/4 ton pickup but I still get things delivered whenever I can. No time wasted driving there and back. I can keep working on something else while I wait.
@@SweBeach2023The example you gave seems like a specific use case, which yes, a personal car would let you do that. Most of the hours for most people who live in suburbia or downtown is not spent for getting concrete, it's for groceries or going to a place, both of which are to do on a bicycle as long as they are close enough. I like having the freedom to chose different travel options when I dont really need to use the car.
@@SweBeach2023And to be clear, I dont think that there is anything wrong with your choice to use a personal vehicle to transport your concrete. Most of the issue I have is that in regions with enough people, bicycling or mass transit should be a viable option to get to another part of the city.
I'm pretty sure they meant to say "multiple bags of concrete"? 50 kg of concrete is no heavier than a 120-pound girlfriend riding with you on your bike. That being said - if you are getting multiple bags of concrete for a job - rent the van the hardware store has available. Unless you like replacing your suspension struts, coilsprings and mounts... Or you forget the bags in the flatbed and it rains... Lets just say I learned from experience.
in the end, the reason the masses won't understand nuance is that it's not our job to. but to function with that mindsets requires a trust in academics and engineers,(and a willingness to put public funds toward public good) things that are sorely lacking in the US and Canada
Since a previous generation of academics and engineers screwed the pooch with auto-centric infrastructure and urban planning... now we can't get out of the vicious circle they put us into!
@@EdwardM-t8p no. the 'suburban experiment' was an experiment. when it became the norm, it was the people who benefited the most that argued the most for it. the people who could tell us that the experiment failed were shuffled into the background a big part of pushing being car-centric was for economic benefits. domestic industry *is* a good thing, but it has simply turned out that there are more cons than pros. car-centricism WAS a decent bet for our future when we could hardly imagine what car-centricism would look like! hindsight is 20/20. saying urban designers and engineers 'failed' is laughable.
another concept: high cost of housing is directly linked to the number of people willing to commute... increase housing, decrease cost and you will have more people moving to Toronto instead of clogging up the roads.
If we were to apply induced demand to housing, we'll need to divide them into multiple categories just as transportation has been divided into multiple categories. Thus, let's suppose for example: cars = single-family detached houses buses = duplexes & town houses trains = apartments & condos *All the urbanists channels advocate for more dense housings than less dense ones for the cities.* Not a single one I am aware of is saying "just build more single-family detached houses" to solve housing, which would be the equivalent argument of saying "just build more lanes" to solve traffic
The major problem with the housing markets in Canada and the US is that they're fueled by speculation from corporations and wealthy individuals (e.g. REITs in Canada). If it were a 1:1 relationship where a family or individual owns one home or one unit, cities could probably build or acquire enough to keep pace with population growth. When wealthy individuals or corporations buy anywhere from dozens to thousands of homes, it drives up the price whether they rent them or leave them empty. The supply/demand mechanism only partially explains the problem.
I'm very curious to see how New York City's Manhattan congestion pricing program performs beginning in early January, 2025. According to the MTA website, " Congestion Pricing will dramatically reduce traffic in the Congestion Relief Zone, transforming the area from gridlocked to unlocked. Less traffic means cleaner air, safer streets, and better transit." This program could have huge implications for Canada and the United States if it's shown to be effective in curbing vehicle traffic as well as funding expansion of public transportation (the stated goal of the collected toll fees).
@@zen1647 They killed it for a while but it's back on after lowering the toll fees. A car driver will have to pay $9.00 during peak time, $4.50 for motorcycles, $14.40 to $21.60 for buses and trucks. Off-peak charges will be much less.
@@nlpnt I doubt it will apply to public transportation buses since the entire idea is to reduce private vehicles and build up public transportation. I could be wrong.
People often hate the public transit system because of how long it takes or being near people that make them nervous. Don't see why there can't be a private bus industry that you pay a subscription to that is more specialized and requires certain criteria like membership that is void in lieu of criminal records.
To be fair induced demand does somewhat apply to housing in that a larger supply will lower prices and people might be more incentivized to move there.
I imagine induced demand would be a problem for housing if we build new houses the way we build new roads: done in way that take up the most space possible with nothing but single family homes with massive lawns, and no measures in place to prevent landlords from buying them all up and pricing them in ways where they're left vacant most of the time.
Induced demand with housing does apply, but the outcomes are almost universally good. More people living in a city makes the city wealthier, especially if housing is built dense enough to be walkable and people shop at local businesses.
@@rlwelch for sure, economy of scale. the distribution of a strong towns, city beautiful , permaculture approach is a lot cheaper when distributed across a dense population that shares the same enthusiasm for the projects.
Well, there are definitely people who buy or pay the rent for an apartment for their kids who don't live so far, to go to university. This takes away housing from the market in university cities. I don't think this is as bad of an issue in Canada, probably also not in the U.S, but it happens often in the Benelux region of Belgium
Wow weve come full circle. I found this channel when I was first digging into housing crisis and I googled "does induced demand apply to housing" and it led me to the last video. Great work as always!
The problem with building large amounts of housing is that it depresses the spectacular real estate boom. Corporate real estate is powerful enough to prevent any progress.
I disagree. Corporations benefit from being allowed to build more housing because they can afford to pay to build. It's old homeowners who lose when housing gets built, because they bought their house to be an asset and not a residence, and they cannot afford to invest in building more housing on newly freed land.
My understanding of his point is that we need to 'stop applying induced demand to house...' _as an argument to reject more, various and high density housing._ If a location continuously improves, grows in desirability and prospers over time, then yes, more folks will want to live there = "induced" demand (good thing)
While you do have some points there I think there is still a bit of truth to the idea of applying induced demand to housing. I am German and not so familiar with the situation in North America. Nevertheless here in Germany we have a housing crisis in big cities. Rents and prices for flats have gone up considerable in big cities while smaller towns are dealing with vacancy and decay. People are moving into the bigger cities which have better infrastructure, better job opportunities etc. Political response is basically just "built more housing in the cities". This lowers prices temporarily and then more people move into the cities. This in term causes smaller towns to die even faster and close services (transportation, medical services, shopping) which in term makes it even more attractive to move... I can see that this can be seen as similar to induced demand.
People seem to think smaller cities can't be improved. Or that we're limited to building gross architecture. Why can't another Paris or Venice be built today? The people want traditional architecture / traditional urbanism.
Hasn’t this general phenomena of rural to urban migration been happening for centuries in every industrialized country? Isn’t the problem that there isn’t sufficient economic planning to establish a job market in smaller towns? It’s not like when young people are forced to remain in rust-belt villages because the metropolis is unaffordable, jobs magically appear to make them prosper. It seems like the problem is that the government has fumbled (intentionally or out of shortsightedness) rural deindustrialization?
@@cautera3403 Not sure if your questions are directed towards me. Just to make sure: I do not see any obvious errors in you reasoning and I do not see that this contradicts what I wrote in my comment in any way...
Also, if one going to build a highway THROUGH a city (which is always a bad idea), it would be better to bury it underground rather than slice through neighborhoods.
As always, your videos are always so dang logical and matter-of-fact. That, and the lack of snark is why I love this channel! These would be the first I point someone to to learn about urbanism.
It's incredible that Ontario is seriously planning on building a Big Dig under highway 401, not to redevelop the surface as a transit, bicycle transportation and recreation corridor but simply to expand highway capacity. It will probably end up as an expensive toll road and nobody will use it! 😂 The money would be better spent extending the Shepard Subway in both directions to connect Scarborough with Pearson International. At least then the province can recoup the money over time with more transit oriented development 😊
Another thing is that in a situation with high traffic congestion, many people who are taking the bus already own a car, but circumstances make transit more easy to use, particularly if you're going to be sitting in traffic anyway. If congestion goes down, suddenly using a car becomes a far more appealing option. This creates a user-base-in-waiting, where the second the congestion is lifted, there's immediately more people ready to use it, virtually over night. With housing, that lead time is waaaay slower, often with people still on yearly or multi-year leases that they are often going to complete before entering into an expanded housing market.
For the citites who decided they weren't done demolishing themselves for highway expansion, Marhon has combined induced demand with the LOS (level of service, basically how reliably you can get from your starting point to your destination, often used as a crutch to expand roads) to make that observation in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Eventually, you'll manage to build yourself out of traffic with that many highway expansion, but there will be no destination left. So no turning off the highway, meaning far less conflict sources, meaning traffic is fluid by default. The best way to have a LOS of A in cities is to have no city in the first place.
If 100% road capacity is the max amount of traffic before slowdown, then 100% housing occupancy is the maximum unit occupancy before decrease in QOL. If enough additional units are built housing unit occupancy should decrease.
One issue is that going beyond 2 lanes in the travel direction the benefit isn't as large. Going from 2 to 4 lanes does not double capacity. It does increase capacity by less then 60%. Building even wider requires even more complex planning with express lanes ramps and underpasses. As soon asbyou hit an intersection it get's even more difficult and wait times longer.
I think the problem with "induced demand" is that it implies that the demand wouldn't be there if you didn't induce it. Induced demand only happens because the pre-existing demand hasn't been satisfied.
Great video!! Another way to say it is building low capacity and low density housing has almost drawbacks to low capacity and low density transportation. If you build out single family detached homes you will have some similar issues to building car infrastructure. Specifically, there won't be enough for everyone. But if you build townhomes, apartments and bus/bike lanes you will have a better time keeping up with demand for everyone.
Although sometimes "one more lane" do fix the problem, it's usually fixing an issue of merging then unmerging lane on a short distance. There are usually some fine tuning to do with trafic fluidity, but at one point, there's no way around changing mode of transportation for a more efficient one. As for Toronto precisely, the main problem is not they need more lanes, it's housing close to downtown is impossible for 99% of the population. They need to move always farther, and use ever more length of road to move around daily. There needs to be options for young families between the 1 bedroom studio downtown and 1+ hour away exurb detached house, at a price the median young couple can afford. Less commute means less need for one more lane. And then, obviously, at a certain point, you need to start using mass transit seriously. Tokyo, London, Paris or New York wouldn't work without the various rail transit. Sure, not everyone use them, but the one that do leave room for the others. 500 students on buses and trains is 500 cars out of the trafic, and 500 parking spaces more on the campus. Then 500 students housed on the campus ground is 500 places left in the transit and car trafic.
Excellent video as usual, but there is one major issue with this comparison that this video misses. Even with horrible car-centric infrastructure, the alternatives to driving are still there, and worst case, you avoid making some trips you would otherwise make to avoid bad congestion, dangerous conditions, or poor service of the alternatives. The alternative to having enough available / affordable housing is widespread homelessness, which is currently going on in much of the western world. Also honestly, one of the major solutions to homelessness is also getting corporations out of owning homes as a commodity, and applying penalties to unoccupied homes. There are more unused homes in the US than homeless people, as one example.
You did not seem to mention the biggest difference: Lack of alternatives. In many places, if driving is not an option, I can bike or take public transit instead. That is not the case for housing. There is no massive supply of housing in the suburbs that people could use instead. It has to be built somewhere.
An issue not considered here is that housing supply is unfortunately consumed not just by people needing to live somewhere but also as an investment vehicle. A cycle of high prices leading to new construction being primarily purchased by investors willing to leave units empty instead of purchased for residence driving prices higher may be seen as comparable to roadway induced demand. Housing construction can still be ineffectual without policies that will either deter investors or encourage investors to make the properties available on the rental market so that they still function as housing.
the issue with induced demand is that the more lanes you build, the less efficiently they will be used, unlike housing. No, a 256 lane highway would not fix traffic, it would cause tons of merging accidents.
It’s not road space that we run out of. It’s space-time. And the shortage of space-time at peak usage times is, as you said, caused by not charging a price. If we had to pay more based on demand, we could keep traffic from reaching critical density. We could sell access to a road in advance but also have a spot price that fluctuates. We could allow people to pay a fixed price for a regular trip but have a dynamic price for those who haven’t scheduled a trip. Then those who scheduled a trip in advance could SELL their access for the spot price if there is unexpected congestion. You might be about to leave and get an offer of $10 above what you paid if you delay your trip by an hour. You could take the offer and find something else to do for an hour. Or ignore the offer. Or you might not accept it quickly enough and find the offer was already accepted by others. Or it might keep going up to a price you can’t resist. The net effect, ideally, is that you keep the system flowing no matter what happens by charging a high spot price when things go wrong. But you also allow people to plan ahead with predictable pricing.
I think another point is that increased housing density creates a strain on existing infrastructure like roads, electricity, water, gas, sewer, telecom, etc. But of course, as long as these things aren't affected, we should still build more housing.
i'm not canadian so i'm quite baffled by this entire highway 401 thing adding tolls on the 401 would be unpopular as you said, but why would they spend money on widening it instead of removing the toll on the 407 to spread out traffic? Or, just from a look on a map, why not a new highway from pickering to vinegar hill, so cars could switch without wasting time doing a weird longer Z-shaped route? basically anything else would be better and cheaper than the tunnel idea
You forgot investors. Investors would be the cause of induced demand. If a city is seen as in demand to live in and more housing is built, corporations and foreigners will see it as an investment opportunity, to buy them as rentals. And then as landlords can intentionally leave units empty to force prices to stay high.
The 'tunnel under the 401" is probably Ford trying to force people on to the 407 or the new 413. What really needs to happen is a train parallel to the 401 or running down the middle of it; ideally a GO line or something of the same capacity, running orbitally across the top of the GTA and intersecting with all the other GO lines.
No, the arguments definitely still apply. With land being fixed in supply, it doesn't make sense to dedicate more and more land to the least land-efficient method. In transportation's case, this means more car lanes. In housing's case, this means more single-family homes. Both of these things still exist in a healthy market, but alongside more efficient alternatives (public transit and higher-density housing).
It's quite insane that people even think that building more housing is bad. More housing is always good. Unlike transport, housing is a basic necessity that has no alternatives. You can live a good life without commuting, even without living on a farm and instead in the downtown. But you can't even live poorly without a home, and without a home, you can't even start trying to get the necessities of an independant and fulfilling life. After all, who'll hire you if you can't even take a shower before your job interview, or even work a at home job without a home to work out of?
The down side of increasing housing supply is the lower prices will increase demand back to equilibrium again, in a similar way to induced demand for roads, as the city becomes more viable to live in. Which has the effect of drawing people into the city who didn't live there before. This is obviously good for the economy, but it puts more strain on the existing infrastructure and services and the already congested roads will get even MORE congested because there's now more people living there and trying to get around. Mind you, on the flip side, it means less long distance commuting, so perhaps that's good. But you will need to build your infrastructure to match the additional housing. Another thing is you may not want a particular city to grow too large. In the UK, we have a problem that London is a massive magnet for people and jobs, and all the investment goes there. Meanwhile all the other cities in the country suffer. You could argue that London isn't expensive ENOUGH and that no more housing should be built there, but instead, loads should be built in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, etc, along with much better local and long distance transit, to encourage people away from London and spread people out a bit more.
It used to be the same here in Sweden. People were focusing more and more on large cities rather than smaller towns and communities. Now (at least for Stockholm) people moving in and out are roughly equal (a couple hundred in or out). However, the cities still continue to grow because of babies and immigrants (tens of thousands increase). Different problem, but at least we're not abandoning the countryside.
@@AnotherDuck How did they make that happen? Was it just investing in the smaller cities vs Stockholm etc? The UK government is unfortunately too London centric and it gets the best of everything.
@@mdhazeldine Not actually sure. Overall media attention has been more positive to the countryside, and more negative towards cities. In particular with the current focus on crime. Which hasn't actually increased, just changed (for the worse, but still), but listening to media you'd think there's a civil war going on.
Claiming induced demand for housing is like acting we are building villa's to reduce the lack of housing. I'm sure people will be more than happy living in subsidized villa's but I don't think that is an efficient way to solve housing shortages.
The biggest difference is that the world would be a better place if everyone was housed, but would get considerably worse if everyone was forced to drive.
Your example of a toll working to induce demand/usage is flawed. People are still using the roads they have opted for a slower and hopefully cheaper route - they havent opted not to drive. In Sydney we have bus lanes and in peak hour we can have a queue of buses 2+km long across the harbor bridge.
Congestion is purely due to travel distance. The only long term solution is to shorten the daily commute, either by living closer to work, or working more from home.
This is a great one. Strong argument in a digestible timeframe. Now I just need to convince all these NYMBYs that they need more housing, and almost 2k a month average rent for a one bedroom is not acceptable in a town with a University.
I’m trying to follow the point of your video. We work hard to make places like Toronto more liveable. More homes, jobs, better streets. So more want to stay and more want to move in. That’s induced demand to live here. We wind up where we started. What’s the solution? And isn’t population growth good for the local economy? Well, yes, if you are a landlord or developer. But when so many can’t afford rent or buy a home, we need to reconsider. Population growth doesn’t just happen because it’s so great here. It’s for actually 2 reasons, it’s because it’s better than other places and because we have a better reputation than other places. If the Ontario government wanted to solve the housing problem, building more homes is just one solution just like adding more car lanes reduces car congestion: Make other parts of Ontario more liveable and desirable. Do a better job hooking people up with jobs and homes outside Southern Ontario. Sell these communities as alternates to Toronto better. This is a lot faster. It can take over a year, sometimes 5 years to build a detached home or a condo tower. It can take a month for people to move out from the time they find another town and get set up. They talk about building 1.5 million homes. We can move that many people out in 6 months or less, without forcing them, without giving incentives. Just find them good places to live, they will do the rest. People will say wait... that will be a DISASTER for the local economy. Ok, I know someone who just bought a condo in Thailand. Guess how much he paid. $8000 and less than $100 a month in condo fees. Now consider buying a shoebox in the sky in Toronto for half a million bucks. Where is the value? And guess if he will continue to live in Toronto? Remember when all the experts said we’re facing an unsustainable population explosion? They now say every country in the world has falling birth rates and many are below the number required to sustain a country’s population. So now the same experts are saying we face a crisis of aging populations and we face impending doom of a new kind. But Toronto still wants to pave over our Green Belt. Now let’s look at induced demand by building more lanes and more highways. We know that will never stop car congestion. The only ways we have to reduce congestion is increase capacity of streets or highways or the overall transportation system. Or we reduce driving. That’s it. Toronto’s Congestion Management Plan involves tweaking traffic light timings, send traffic cops to hotspots to shoo drivers through intersections, streamline when construction constricts street widths, fly drones over congested intersections and use AI to model congestion. Consider each one how much they individually and combined will reduce overall congestion? All of them are band aid solutions to systemic problems that need general fixes. So let’s look at the first go-to approach to reducing congestion. Just one more lane, bro. One more highway. Raise the capacity of streets to handle more cars. Get rid of bike lanes on main streets or better yet, get rid of all of them! It works, it really does! But we’ve been adding capacity for over a hundred years and there’s only so much more we can do. What about reducing driving? Compare the Netherlands to any site in North America. Watch street videos. We have a lot of car congestion. The Dutch don’t. It could be why Dutch drivers like driving there so much. Bicycling cities reduce car congestion by reducing how much they drive. They reduce demand for driving without forcing people out of cars, by making bicycling a very good option. We could do that and cut car congestion on the 401 in half or more, so much they can’t charge tolls on the 407. We do that by building bike lanes. Honestly, this could be the reason Ford wants to stop bike lanes. People know how much better it makes things and they can’t build any more highways. It’s actually in the best interest to Toronto to see Northern Ontario prosper. The prices of homes in Toronto is pathetic.
"imagine housing was limited to one or 2 stories and it was given away for free" (not mentioned but also imagine building is very difficult due to lack of space) This is the social housing situation in Ireland and the UK. But people still say oh no let in as many immigrants as want to come and just build more of them
@user-gu9yq5sj7c they did indeed. If you notice in my original comment I'm not talking about America, I don't have experience with your housing market so I limited my comments to my own locality. I'm not blaming migrants personally, if I was in their shoes and the government was offering me a free house I'd absolutely take it. I blame the government for letting so many people who we can't support emigrate and then providing houses for free, rather than forcing people to either afford one on their own or stay with their parents like people have had to do historically. There's no actual housing shortage here either but housing is used so inefficiently with divorces and small families and young people moving out when they can't afford it that the market makes it look like there is one. The way to solve this is to completely reset the culture to value family, community and personal responsibility above convenience, but because people are short sighted and this would necessarily be intrusive the next best thing is to limit population growth, and the best way to do that is to limit emigration.
Driving isn't free. It is pretty expensive just like housing and is subject to the same market forces of supply and demand. Both have their limits. But in general when an inflection point is crossed building more housing does not solve the housing crisis. No city has ever built there way out of a housing crisis. If more housing equaled lower prices than New York City would have the cheapest housing because it has the most tower blocks. Even with high capacity 50 and 60 floor tower blocks the prices never came down. They went the opposite direction. New Apartments in New York cost millions of dollars. This is because the more housing you build the more it induces demand. The demand induces faster than you can build. This phenomenon can be see in any city building simulator game like Cities Skylines. You can just build and build and build until you fill the entire map all the while the prices just go up and up forever. The only way to lower rents is though rent controls. Not supply side economics.
There _does_ seem to be a problem with housing being bought as an investment rather than a dwelling, and with people wanting to “protect” that investment by restricting further development (and services). At least, that's why I _think_ we have a housing shortage in urban California, one of the richest places in the world.
You are forgetting the root cause of the problem: Young couples making babies 🙂 Consider Mahattan which is pretty much built up and high density. But every baby that is is delivered by the stork will eventually require housing of its own. But how do you accomodate growing population when the city is already built up? Growing population is also the issue with cars. A road infrastructure that was designed when Toronto was a small town in the 1950s can't handle population growth after half of Montréal moved there after 1976 and Toronto became Canada's largest city. (Montréal, in stalling growth because of 1976/separation was spared the worse of this growth, but eventually the problm catches up). From a transport point of view, the only way an existing city can handle population growth is via modal change. Even when growth happens in the suburbs, the need to travel to downtown still increases and downtown congestion becomes unmanageable, (and gets worse if you increase highway capacity to downtown). Modal shift to public transit/bike is the only way to hanlde population growth in an existing city. What is truly needed is for for a country such as Canada to stop focusing on only Toronto and Vancouver and shift population growth to other cities. When demand exceeds supply of land, then it becomes impossible to have affordable housing because the cost of land on which to built appartment buildings makes it financial ipossible to rent at affordable rates. So essentially you are forced to into urban sprawl where land on the outskirts is still affordable.
I just wish the city planners would make sure infrastructure is set up to handle the new amount of people coming in with the housing developments they approve. Liberty Village comes to mind in Toronto. Huge development that put in a massive amount of people, but with horrible public transit connections. Residents then chose the car as their transit option and with only a couple roads in and out the place is a traffic nightmare. I fear of the same issue happening in the Portlands. The Waterfront East LRT is struggling to get funded and I worry housing developments will go in before any suitable transit options. In Amsterdam, when they were creating the IJburg area, they made sure that transit went in first.
Counterargument: Increased supply of housing *can* induce demand from property investors, even if it doesn't induce demand from people who want to live in the new housing. China has this exact problem, of having a huge housing bubble, as investors have bought empty housing despite China's declining population. Much of this housing is low-quality "tofu dreg" apartments that have been built in the middle of nowhere, purely for the sake of investments, rather than for people to actually move into. People may be basing an argument against building more housing on their observation of the harmful effects of doing this in China, or similar investment bubbles in other countries. Counter-counterargument: This is mostly not applicable to the USA and Canada, which are both growing in population, so building more housing is much more likely to be beneficial in the long term, even if it could induce a housing inverstment bubble in the short term. If a lot of people need homes, and even more people will need homes in the near future, building homes for them is just common sense.
A great debunking of the fallacy! I do see one possibility for something like induced demand in housing. Many people assume that higher density makes a place less attractive, but what if the reverse is true? Higher density meaning more attractions within a walkable radius, more customers funding good transit... So, say you upzone. The supply curve moves to the right, market equilibrium price drops and market quantity increases. But now the place is more attractive, meaning that the _demand_ curve shifts right, leading to even higher market quantity but also higher market price. In this case, whether upzoning ends up lowering prices can't be determined theoretically, we'd have to look at specific places. Like building more lanes, there's still a benefit in this scenario: more people getting to live where they want. But it's possible prices wouldn't drop. (Theoretically. I have no idea what reality is -- very big cities are expensive, but are they high demand because they're dense or dense because they're high demand?) (There's also another reason for price floors: the higher costs of certain kinds of higher density construction, e.g. when you go from 3-story wood frame to concrete + elevators to steel high-rises. But this isn't about induced demand at all, just higher marginal costs of production, as happens in most goods.)
induced demand is good for the people that get to use the new road (even if it's full of traffic) and the people that get to live in new housing (even if rents don't go down). otherwise they wouldn't use the road or live in the housing! it's about what we prioritize as a society.
Slightly tangential to the main point of the video, but I do think that we’re at a point where mass production of housing (commanded by the government) really is our only hope at this point. Even if we opened the regulatory “floodgates” (which in itself probably wouldn’t be great. many regulations are there for a reason), it doesn’t seem like developers have the capacity or desire to quickly ramp production.
i feel like many of the lawnchair urbanists really dont get the induced demand. demand can only be induced if there was a large amount of latent demand, this happens to be true for most large cities but also very much isnt true for most other places.
Unbelievable that Ontario is considering expanding a 12 lane highway. The ultimate expression of "just one more lane bro" !
Just one more lane, bro.
Ah yes, the solution to ease congestion is to increase more cars on the road?
it's getting embarrassing at this point
Truly one of the dumbest things. Ontario, man. Also, ripping up bike lanes? For real?
its a thirty minute commute from the leftmost lane to the right lane
how about they replace that one massive traffic light junction thats causing all the traffic to back up with a roundabout?
7:51 Another reason why this argument falls apart.
In the absence of cars ideally one can walk, cycle, ride the bus or metro... But in the absence of built housing, people have no alternative - they'd be homeless!
Exactly the extreme logical fallacy with such a comparison between road lanes and housing…
Currently in the absence of car, we're landlocked in NA suburbs
in absence of housing they make the megapolis better, LEAVE!
Being homeless is basically the same as walking or cycling in that analogy though, and buses and metros would be like shelters.
The comment makes sense if you don’t look at it literally, I wouldn’t say the comment is saying cars are nice same as houses are meaning that even if sometimes it’s hard cars are useful
induced demand for housing definitely exists.
if housing were cheaper, more people would move out of living with their families earlier, more people would live alone and not with roommates, and more couples would start having kids earlier.
which are all things society considers as positive outcomes.
similarly, people that drive on new roads enjoy some benefit from it, otherwise they wouldn't do it! it's the social costs of the new roads (pollution, less space for other things, etc) that we don't want
More people would also feel a greater degree of alienation, more elderly would be left to fend for themselves, more energy and resources would be required to maintain and build said resources, a higher need for transportation would be created etc.
No, society does not consider those good outcomes. Society comes up with the flimsiest excuses to make them impossible to achieve. Commuting is a virtue.
@@SweBeach2023 Regarding alienation - the young people I talk to feel alienated because they can't invite their friends around to their parent's house easily, so they can only socialise by going out, which can be expensive. If they could afford to move out, preferably into a flat with a couple of friends, they would be much more socially connected and build better social skills.
@@SweBeach2023counterpoint to you and @hylje is that with cheaper high density housing it would be much easier for extended families and friends to afford to live near each other. Easier to still move out of your parent’s attic but still walk 10 minutes over for Sunday dinner or babysitting. It’s easier to have the quiet and luxury of having a 1 bedroom but meet your friends within 20 minutes walk at a bar without worrying about driving.
If diverse housing was available and cheap, it would be easier for elderly empty nesters to downsize from their large house. They wouldn’t be pinned down by the necessity of holding onto their house(land) shaped retirement investment and the lack of options to be near their existing community.
I think many people would still be alienated because Industrial/post-Industrial capitalism just does that, plus algorithmic digital media. But I think reversing the trend of physical isolation/stuck-ness would probably help.
Transportation and housing can be looked at the same way. We need more high capacity solutions. This applies to transportation (less cars and more trains, buses, and bike infrastructure) and housing (less single-family homes and more duplexes, apartments, and condos).
Yes, and the entire reason that cars aren't a viable solution to transportation in cities is that they are inherently low capacity. Induced demand is a problem for cars because cars are inefficient and cannot scale to high capacities. Induced demand is not a problem for public transport and bikes because those _are_ highly efficient and can easily be scaled up.
The condo market is dead. We haven't built any substantial amount of them in Calgary in a decade, due to oversupply, and now Toronto is facing the same issues. Condo sales are overwhelmingly driven by investors, and they are a bad investment now, with declining valuations and many months worth of inventory just lying around. If I look around me, prices have exploded for single family, townhouses, and duplexes, and people are still buying those. Few people want to buy condos anymore, and nobody wants to build them.
Its mostly because its harder to sell condos 25 years doan the line when compared to single family houses, since you can still sell the land even if the house has rotted away.
The problem circles again to housing being used as an investment
Private cars are the detached single family houses of transpiration. Desired and luxurious, but so inefficient spatially that they should be avoided in urban areas.
This is a very good point.
I also thought that
cars : single-family detached houses
buses : duplexes & town houses
trains : apartments & condos
and thus the "just build more lanes" wouldn't solve traffic, just as "just build more single-family houses" wouldn't solve housing. And as far as I am aware of, not a single urbanist channel says cities should build more single-family detached houses. They all wanted multi-family housings, which is consistent with their advocacy of public transit (based on the above analogy)
The issue is that induced traffic comes from expanded SUBURBAN residential areas.
People _ARE_ traffic.
Hello, I wanted to comment that this video felt like a missed opportunity to talk about public goods. What you were describing was similar to the issues with public goods, but without the framework we have to describe them and how housing is not one. In economics, public goods are goods and services which are both non rivalrous and non excludable. Roads are common-pool good, meaning they are rivalrous but non excludable, thats why they tend to be overconsumed (that is what congestion is). Housing on the other hand is a complety private good, meaning it is rivalrous (my consumption of my house means someone else misses out on the house) and excludable (I can close the door to my house and prevent people from using it) which is why it doesn't suffer from induced demand. Public goods are usually an economic argument for state intervention and tolls on highways are a measure to make roads excludable, to "combat" overconsumption. Hope you find it useful and I suggest reading about public goods, as I think they are key to understanding things like transport and cities in general.
That's a great introduction to the concept of public goods, thank you. Are you willing to share any authors or books on the topic you feel helped illuminate it?
Public goods is indeed a good point. But this has nothing to do with induced demand and a lot more that the winning strategy with respect to public goods is to behave like a douchebag. You will reap more of the good, while the costs will be spread to everyone. This is why the commons of old (and still in many developing countries) suffer from overgrazing.
However, driving does not really work like that. You get the same end result (going from A to B) and there are substantial costs on driving, both immediate and visible, and some less so. People may be able to ignore the cost for depreciation, but time is a cost as well and very visible. If something takes 20 minutes by car and 10 by bike, only few people will drive. The issue is that reality is quite the contrary. Driving, even with traffic, is often by far the fastest option. Not just in the US, in most of Europe as well. Moreover, driving is often much safer than mixing with cars. Not just in cities, but especially in rural areas. Urbanists love to talk about how biking at an arterial is bad...now imagine biking on a rural road with cars coming from behind at 100-120km/h...
I personally things motorways should all be privatised as then they are private goods and the benefits will pay off the negatives or the company will go bankrupt, this means we would still have motorways but they would make money rather than cost money
@@rhysrail This might work for highways and at larger cities. But it definitely will not work in small towns and rural areas. There are simply not enough drivers to make a privatized road work at somewhat reasonable prices.
Keep in mind that people in rural areas already have very high cost for mobility, as they do actually rely on the car. Given the distances (though that can be alleviated a bit with electric bikes) and the lack of safe cycling infrastructure, there are little alternatives to driving. Transit also does not work if there are only few people.
Limited access roads are artificially excludeable, that's what tolls are, just like TV
In the United States maybe induced demand does apply to housing, because 75% of land is zoned for single family detached houses (low capacity/difficult to expand) and mortgages are subsidized/guaranteed/have tax benefits (not "free," but they price is highly distorted).
And roads are built to open more land to development, or were. Now it's the roads are expanded to catch up to the development which only encourages more developments further out!
Same in Canada
I wonder if it is because single family detached houses (often single story) with gardens are more popular among families with children than other housing options.
@@Myrtone No: because if it was by demand, building multi-family housing would not be illegal.
Racism plays a part in it. Readlining was used to enable the "white flight" to the suburbs, while at the same time preventing Black families from owning their own homes.
@Myrtone If it was so popular they would still be predominant even with more relaxed rules about what you could build. Right now they are "popular" because everything else is illegal on 75% of land.
Ottawa did used to have massive rush hour congestion with almost entirely buses downtown, but the LRT basically fixed that, as full of problems as it is
Ottawa O
What? OC transport ridership is down from pre-pandemic levels due to it's unreliability. With the governments back to office mandate has caused a ton of congestion on the 417 both ways, the O-train didn't fix Ottawa's congestion WFH did.
It has too many problems
@@gibusgaming I'm specifically talking about how it was along the two downtown streets with all the busses before the LRT opened during rush hour
@@gibusgaming you’ve never been stuck on a bus moving through centretown on Slater or Albert in rush hour pre-LRT and it shows. The LRT literally DID solve the specific problem of buses converging & clogging in Centretown even if its reliability is dubious & its servicing pattern is questionable.
The main distinction is that housing is good and driving is bad.
This you? -> 🗿👑
Driving is good, actually
@@gumbyshrimp2606Almost objectively not. Burning fossil moves just to fucking move is pretty silly if you ask me
@@Throwaway-ix2peI personally enjoy driving
@@Sam-w5v That is cool I do too. I’m dear near 500hp and will be over that with an intake a tune very soon I love doing pulls and driving a nice car. This does not mean every single time I want to get out my house I have to contribute to destroying the planet, and even if I get an electric car contribute to a process that is killing children who are mining for rare metals. In North American nearly all of our societies are based on public transit which has been demolished for highways. It is ok if you like driving because I do to we just have to not impose driving on nearly every individual in North America
The main difference is that people should be entitled to housing and transportation, regardless of how rich or poor they may be. People should not entitled to operate and store their private vehicle in public spaces, appropriating valuable land that could otherwise be used to build things that actually matter. It's all about priorities.
Why in Canada not massive busway like jakarta ?
A bicycle is a private vehicle. So no bike racks or lanes in public space? Some priorities you got.
@@delftfietser Does bicycle infrastructure matter? If so, then make it a priority like I mentioned.
No bike racks or lanes at the expense of housing, no.
But they take up so much less space that it's dramatically more practical to incorporate bike storage and lanes without costing your ability to build housing.
You're right, most of the same basic logic of cars applies to bikes, with 3 key differences:
Bikes take up so much less space that it is a tiny problem compared to car storage and transportation. You could turn every existing road into a bike road and every parking lot into a bike parking lot, and you'd have room to double the population of every city in America without running into serious congestion issues, because they need so much less space than cars
Bikes weigh so much less that it's quite difficult to kill someone or seriously injure them in a collision. And they're so much smaller that it happens less often. And they barely damage roads compared to cars because they weigh so little, so they cause almost no physical harm to cities.
Bikes don't cause noise or air pollution. So they don't harm human health either. They're a net benefit, if anything. Low impact cardio exercise.
So, on the surface they're the same, but in practice they're dramatically different.
It's like comparing a pet cat to a pet horse. You can draw some surface level comparisons and apply similar logic, but in practice they're very different.
@@kylejohnson6775 I literally agree on everything you mentioned. This is a video about housing and how “induced demand” doesn’t apply to it. Nobody is arguing about whether or not we need more bike infrastructure. Obviously we do. It’s part of the “transportation” we are all entitled to. We’re entitled to transportation, not to the storage of our personal property on public spaces. It’s obviously nice to have if we can afford it, but should never come at the expense of housing or public transportation. And of course bikes are way more flexible than cars and can fit more easily in public spaces.
Again, why are we arguing?
The most expensive housing is in metro areas that are walkable, bikeable, and have good public transit, because there is not enough supply to meet demand.
Roads are an expense, buildings are revenue. If a city builds too many roads at the expense of buildings, then its revenues will decline. But unfortunately, in most N.A. cities the formula is for suburbanites to drive in and out of downtown areas for work or entertainment reasons, so if cities do not sacrifice buildings for roads, then businesses do not get the suburban traffic which they rely upon for increased revenue.
If we stop subsidizing the suburbs, they will collapse on their own and people will move beck to civilization.
Ever heard of commuter rail? There are other, better ways to transport people from one place to another, at the same times five days a week, than by cars.
@@Greeniykyk You are making the mistake of applying logic to irrational thinking. For example, what sense does it make to drive to a bar, or spend two hours a day sitting in traffic? None, but try telling someone this is crazy, and you will likely get laughed at.
@@Alex-od7nl yeah sadly people are just to ignorant, theyll rather pay thousands of dollars in gas, insurance and maintenance a year just to be able to drive 3 miles everyday.
Those people think that you want to abolish cars and force them into high rises but we want just a bit of change
Let me guess, a 15 minute city is the ideal solution?
Just build more lines! They are underground. Dont take parking spots. And you could push so many people into one train. I am talking about metro lines of course.
we could do that
...or we could learn from other cities' mistakes
and just give back the city to the majority of its citizens
@@pcongre wat
I think building codes need to stop being so prescriptive and restrictive. Let the market guide what needs to be built: that only works if you let that thing be built!
As usual, your video is precise in dismantling a misconception. Thanks for hitting it out of the park once again!
It wasn’t a misconception but rather a statement, personally I would say it was showing that just because things are more efficient than cars it doesn’t mean that cars are bad, and I wouldn’t say a response to that is to privatise motorways as then it is self balancing as with houses with you get what you choose to spend your money on
I keep hearing this brag about Toronto having the most cranes in the sky building endless condos, but the infrastructure is not keeping up. Driving around the city is so terrible right now that I've decided to permanently give up my car and use my bicycle as much as possible. It beats traffic and it beats TTC delays, emergencies and the dreaded short turn. I am the captain now.
I'm glad you found a better way! I don't think the condos with like 0.2 parking spaces per unit are the cause of the traffic lol. It might have something to do with the massive sea of single family homes with 2-3 cars each that has expanded a ton recently at the edges of the gta
@@nick2555v6 It's brilliant new buildings are being built with minimal parking now. I think all infrastructure is bad! I wasn't even thinking about the roads on that one. I live in an older building downtown that has a nearly empty 3 story parking garage and 0 bike racks.
Becoming fed up with the TTC streetcars stuck in car traffic is what pushed me onto a bike over a decade ago. I haven't seriously looked back since.
And now Doug Ford has screwed you guys over, forcing you to put yourself in danger by having to compete with cars on the road or to put up with the daily crush on the TTC subway or infinite delays on the busses and streetcars that are stuck in auto traffic.
the equivalent to trying to solve congestion with building more lanes in housing would be, to try to solve housing crises with building mcmansions.
...which is exactly what we are doing in Canada.
Private cars are the detached single family houses of transpiration. Desired and luxurious, but so inefficient spatially that they should be avoided in urban areas.
Buses are townhouses.
Trains are apartments.
@@MrSunrise-the point is not to meet the basic needs of a population, it’s to attempt to maximize profit for a few
You’d think governments would know by now to subsidize housing just as they subsidize food.
@@SigFigNewton the thing is, it is important how you subsidize housing. And even more important what kind of housing you allow.
The keyword here is "scalability". Increasing lanes in a high-way is tied to diminishing returns. Adding a lane in a highway that already has 2 will increase capacity by 33%. But a fourth will increase it by 25% and a fifth by only 20%.
Assuming that the cost of adding a lane is the same each time then you run into a situation where adding relative capacity to a high-way becomes more and more expensive, aka diminishing returns.
If you had a rail-corridor instead you could literally double capacity by doubling the amount of trains, this is tied to constant-returns instead. Not to mention the fact that adding more lanes is infinitely more complex and often much more expensive than buying trains.
Developing transit or housing will also obviously lead to its own induced demand. The actual difference is that car travel doesn't scale up the same way.
Why is your username Baby Blood Distilleries? Are you a supporter of abortion?
It would probably decrease a lot faster than that.
While it may be sensible to assume that adding each new lane simply adds a definitive amount of capacity (1500-1800 vehicles per hour) to the total capacity, in reality, people don't use all the lanes on a stupidly wide highway equally. People tend to bunch up on the lanes where there are onramps and offramps, and if the highway keeps getting widened, merging conflicts and lane changes get much much worse which makes capacity worse. Forcing cars to cross more lanes means worse traffic flow.
But with public transit, capacity can be easily managed and is much more scalable. For example if a metro is running short 4 car trains, adding 2 carriages to make 6 car trains and increasing capacity by 50% doesn't come with the same capacity limits as cars merging across each other as it's way easier to get passengers to use all the carriages of the train compared to forcing drivers to use all lanes. And running trains more frequently actually helps metros to run more efficiently as platforms are cleared faster since there's less buildup of people waiting for a train.
the really insane thing is that some people have homes or apartments that greatly exceed their need simply because they can afford it and then fill it with additional crap they also don't need because they can afford that garbage. We have a huge problem in the developed countries with the idea that paying taxes is a bad thing or some kind of punishment, it should be viewed as a privilege, something you are honored to do because you live in a time and place where you are not beholden to the whims of a warlord or monarch and your excess wealth can be used to uplift those who do NOT have what you already do instead of surround yourself with a steady stream of baubles and trinkets, the overwhelming majority of which will end up in a trash heap decomposing back into the various components they were sourced from that is the modern day joke of futile consumerism
As someone who lives in a rural area, I would *love* to see effective congestion pricing. As it is, I just avoid cities completely, or accept that I'll need to waste time looking for parking & figuring out how to use an unfamiliar public transit system, or being stuck in traffic. Far more people would use buses if car-drivers couldn't externalize their costs, and with more bus-users, they could offer higher-frequency service.
Here in Stockholm we have congestion pricing for the inner city. Pretty much everyone outside were against it, and people inside were for it. Thankfully, the government listened to the people who actually live in the affected area. And now it brings in a good amount of money that's used for metro expansions, a road around the city, and other things.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The price of continue building more highways to accommodate suburbanites who don't work where they live is more congestion and heavier tax burden to maintain those roads in the future. ask yourself, how does a suburbanite get to ttc? how much worst congestion will be when hybrid or remote work return to the office...doesn't the abandoned food courts in downtown toronto offers an indication of the potential? more insanity?
There is a point to applying induced demand to housing if you focus on the major cities. Increased availability paired with general urbanisation will attract more people to key cities and thus perpetuate the problem. Increasing availability will increase demand in the major cities, because in the post-industrial age a lot of people want to move to the major cities for white-collar work opportunities, cultural iife etc. The arrival of these people itself creates new job opportunities, and makes the city more appealing culturally etc., and thus there's a feedback loop, and "the beast" grows larger. And the larger it is, the more of a pull it has. I dubbed it the "metropolitan effect" in an article I wrote about it, based on a study made at the London School of Economics about how increasing supply also increases demand (which I have forgotten the name of, I'm afraid).
I'm also from London, and I was about to say something like this (but less scientifically).
Induced demand is good for the people that get to enjoy a new road, and people that get to enjoy new housing!
That effect can also introduce political distortions, where the urban majority loses legislative chambers to the rural minority. Urbanites wind up in a small number of compact districts that they win by overwhelming margins, while rural dwellers are spread out in more districts that they win by smaller, but still decisive margins. It's even worse in the US, where partisan mapmaking for state legislatures and the US House of Representatives can lock in these trends, and the Senate gives equal representation to all states regardless of population.
My understanding of his point is that we need to 'stop applying induced demand to house...' _as an argument to reject more, various and high density housing._
Yes, if a city continuously improves and prospers, then yes, more folks will want to live there.
Jevon's paradox
It’s all tied to car culture and the illusion that cars are a ticket to freedom (freedom to be tied to a depreciating asset, freedom to need parking, freedom to be stuck in traffic, etc.) The younger generation isn’t enamoured with personal car ownership the way we GenX and Boomers were. I think car culture may finally be due for a significant decline over the next 20 years.
Cars are still freedom. Today I went to buy 50 kg of concrete. Please tell me the best way to do it if not by car? Too far/heavy to transport using bike or public transport. Not sure if any taxi would accept sacks of concrete as luggage or me dressed in a very dirty overall as a customer. Having it shipped? Sure, if it wasn't for the fact I yesterday didn't know I needed it today.
@ Seriously? You call the building supply store and get it delivered. They use their own truck and drop it off at your door, same day. I have a 3/4 ton pickup but I still get things delivered whenever I can. No time wasted driving there and back. I can keep working on something else while I wait.
@@SweBeach2023The example you gave seems like a specific use case, which yes, a personal car would let you do that. Most of the hours for most people who live in suburbia or downtown is not spent for getting concrete, it's for groceries or going to a place, both of which are to do on a bicycle as long as they are close enough. I like having the freedom to chose different travel options when I dont really need to use the car.
@@SweBeach2023And to be clear, I dont think that there is anything wrong with your choice to use a personal vehicle to transport your concrete. Most of the issue I have is that in regions with enough people, bicycling or mass transit should be a viable option to get to another part of the city.
I'm pretty sure they meant to say "multiple bags of concrete"? 50 kg of concrete is no heavier than a 120-pound girlfriend riding with you on your bike.
That being said - if you are getting multiple bags of concrete for a job - rent the van the hardware store has available. Unless you like replacing your suspension struts, coilsprings and mounts... Or you forget the bags in the flatbed and it rains...
Lets just say I learned from experience.
in the end, the reason the masses won't understand nuance is that it's not our job to. but to function with that mindsets requires a trust in academics and engineers,(and a willingness to put public funds toward public good) things that are sorely lacking in the US and Canada
Ew gross. No. Everything said was untrue
Since a previous generation of academics and engineers screwed the pooch with auto-centric infrastructure and urban planning... now we can't get out of the vicious circle they put us into!
@@EdwardM-t8p no. the 'suburban experiment' was an experiment. when it became the norm, it was the people who benefited the most that argued the most for it. the people who could tell us that the experiment failed were shuffled into the background
a big part of pushing being car-centric was for economic benefits. domestic industry *is* a good thing, but it has simply turned out that there are more cons than pros.
car-centricism WAS a decent bet for our future when we could hardly imagine what car-centricism would look like! hindsight is 20/20. saying urban designers and engineers 'failed' is laughable.
@@tann_man how?
Y’all’s shit is so good dude. Criminally underrated urbanist channel.
The best urbanist channel
another concept: high cost of housing is directly linked to the number of people willing to commute... increase housing, decrease cost and you will have more people moving to Toronto instead of clogging up the roads.
If we were to apply induced demand to housing, we'll need to divide them into multiple categories just as transportation has been divided into multiple categories. Thus, let's suppose for example:
cars = single-family detached houses
buses = duplexes & town houses
trains = apartments & condos
*All the urbanists channels advocate for more dense housings than less dense ones for the cities.* Not a single one I am aware of is saying "just build more single-family detached houses" to solve housing, which would be the equivalent argument of saying "just build more lanes" to solve traffic
The major problem with the housing markets in Canada and the US is that they're fueled by speculation from corporations and wealthy individuals (e.g. REITs in Canada). If it were a 1:1 relationship where a family or individual owns one home or one unit, cities could probably build or acquire enough to keep pace with population growth. When wealthy individuals or corporations buy anywhere from dozens to thousands of homes, it drives up the price whether they rent them or leave them empty. The supply/demand mechanism only partially explains the problem.
This channel is so sensible and calm. It's lovely.
I'm very curious to see how New York City's Manhattan congestion pricing program performs beginning in early January, 2025. According to the MTA website,
" Congestion Pricing will dramatically reduce traffic in the Congestion Relief Zone, transforming the area from gridlocked to unlocked. Less traffic means cleaner air, safer streets, and better transit."
This program could have huge implications for Canada and the United States if it's shown to be effective in curbing vehicle traffic as well as funding expansion of public transportation (the stated goal of the collected toll fees).
Oh, it's back on? Last time I heard it was canceled/postponed. Awesome if it is back on!
@@zen1647 They killed it for a while but it's back on after lowering the toll fees. A car driver will have to pay $9.00 during peak time, $4.50 for motorcycles, $14.40 to $21.60 for buses and trucks. Off-peak charges will be much less.
@@Urbanhandyman I wonder if it's applied to public buses as well. I only go into NYC about once a year but when I do it's on NJT.
@@nlpntno it isn’t applied to buses
@@nlpnt I doubt it will apply to public transportation buses since the entire idea is to reduce private vehicles and build up public transportation. I could be wrong.
People often hate the public transit system because of how long it takes or being near people that make them nervous. Don't see why there can't be a private bus industry that you pay a subscription to that is more specialized and requires certain criteria like membership that is void in lieu of criminal records.
Privatised public transport isn't competitive with driving. Public transport only works when it's public.
To be fair induced demand does somewhat apply to housing in that a larger supply will lower prices and people might be more incentivized to move there.
I imagine induced demand would be a problem for housing if we build new houses the way we build new roads: done in way that take up the most space possible with nothing but single family homes with massive lawns, and no measures in place to prevent landlords from buying them all up and pricing them in ways where they're left vacant most of the time.
Induced demand with housing does apply, but the outcomes are almost universally good. More people living in a city makes the city wealthier, especially if housing is built dense enough to be walkable and people shop at local businesses.
housing is a fundamental need so it does not really subscribe to the same rules than most other activities / goods
Which rules are you referring to?
It's a private good. It follows the rules of goods.
one caveat i didn't hear.
with more housing we need to ensure the other infrastructure keeps up with the new demands.
And it's a lot!
- Utiliites: water, electricity, telecommunications (ex. Internet), waste management, wastewater, storm water, fuel delivery (ex. gas lines)
- Public services: health, education (schools, universities / colleges, libraries), security (firefighting, police), government offices (ex. DMV, taxes, welfare programs)...
- Commerce: retail, offices, hospitality, restaurants...
- Amenities: parks, plazas, museums, stadiums, arenas, theaters, protected natural areas near the city...
- Transportation: roadways, railways, air travel, aquatic transport (seaports, ferries, etc.) non-motorized transportation (cycling / walking), parking...
But a lot less per person if the housing is dense!
@@rlwelch
for sure, economy of scale. the distribution of a strong towns, city beautiful , permaculture approach is a lot cheaper when distributed across a dense population that shares the same enthusiasm for the projects.
@@LucarioBoricuaa lot easier to finance all that when you have a higher ratio of taxpayers per square foot of infrastructure
You guys are the best urbanists on RUclips, hands down!
Well, there are definitely people who buy or pay the rent for an apartment for their kids who don't live so far, to go to university. This takes away housing from the market in university cities. I don't think this is as bad of an issue in Canada, probably also not in the U.S, but it happens often in the Benelux region of Belgium
Wow weve come full circle. I found this channel when I was first digging into housing crisis and I googled "does induced demand apply to housing" and it led me to the last video.
Great work as always!
"we don't have 18 lanes of trains anywhere in the world"
train stations with more than 18 platforms: what are we then?
Often very nice places to be, unlike a major highway interchange
A train station is more analogous to a parking lot, not a highway
@@user-xi1il1lr3k Most parking lots have a lot more than 18 spaces.
That’s essentially a train parking lot
The entire NEC isn’t even quad tracked!
The problem with building large amounts of housing is that it depresses the spectacular real estate boom. Corporate real estate is powerful enough to prevent any progress.
I disagree. Corporations benefit from being allowed to build more housing because they can afford to pay to build. It's old homeowners who lose when housing gets built, because they bought their house to be an asset and not a residence, and they cannot afford to invest in building more housing on newly freed land.
My understanding of his point is that we need to 'stop applying induced demand to house...' _as an argument to reject more, various and high density housing._
If a location continuously improves, grows in desirability and prospers over time, then yes, more folks will want to live there = "induced" demand (good thing)
Reducing the quality of life of most in order to see your real estate appreciate
While you do have some points there I think there is still a bit of truth to the idea of applying induced demand to housing. I am German and not so familiar with the situation in North America. Nevertheless here in Germany we have a housing crisis in big cities. Rents and prices for flats have gone up considerable in big cities while smaller towns are dealing with vacancy and decay. People are moving into the bigger cities which have better infrastructure, better job opportunities etc. Political response is basically just "built more housing in the cities". This lowers prices temporarily and then more people move into the cities. This in term causes smaller towns to die even faster and close services (transportation, medical services, shopping) which in term makes it even more attractive to move... I can see that this can be seen as similar to induced demand.
People seem to think smaller cities can't be improved. Or that we're limited to building gross architecture. Why can't another Paris or Venice be built today? The people want traditional architecture / traditional urbanism.
Hasn’t this general phenomena of rural to urban migration been happening for centuries in every industrialized country?
Isn’t the problem that there isn’t sufficient economic planning to establish a job market in smaller towns? It’s not like when young people are forced to remain in rust-belt villages because the metropolis is unaffordable, jobs magically appear to make them prosper.
It seems like the problem is that the government has fumbled (intentionally or out of shortsightedness) rural deindustrialization?
@@cautera3403 Not sure if your questions are directed towards me. Just to make sure: I do not see any obvious errors in you reasoning and I do not see that this contradicts what I wrote in my comment in any way...
Also, if one going to build a highway THROUGH a city (which is always a bad idea), it would be better to bury it underground rather than slice through neighborhoods.
The fact that this has to be made to explain this is disturbing.
As always, your videos are always so dang logical and matter-of-fact. That, and the lack of snark is why I love this channel! These would be the first I point someone to to learn about urbanism.
Basic economics and the importance of pricing things really needs to be taught to everyone. It's just so important to how modern society functions.
It's incredible that Ontario is seriously planning on building a Big Dig under highway 401, not to redevelop the surface as a transit, bicycle transportation and recreation corridor but simply to expand highway capacity. It will probably end up as an expensive toll road and nobody will use it! 😂 The money would be better spent extending the Shepard Subway in both directions to connect Scarborough with Pearson International. At least then the province can recoup the money over time with more transit oriented development 😊
Another thing is that in a situation with high traffic congestion, many people who are taking the bus already own a car, but circumstances make transit more easy to use, particularly if you're going to be sitting in traffic anyway. If congestion goes down, suddenly using a car becomes a far more appealing option. This creates a user-base-in-waiting, where the second the congestion is lifted, there's immediately more people ready to use it, virtually over night. With housing, that lead time is waaaay slower, often with people still on yearly or multi-year leases that they are often going to complete before entering into an expanded housing market.
For the citites who decided they weren't done demolishing themselves for highway expansion, Marhon has combined induced demand with the LOS (level of service, basically how reliably you can get from your starting point to your destination, often used as a crutch to expand roads) to make that observation in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer:
Eventually, you'll manage to build yourself out of traffic with that many highway expansion, but there will be no destination left. So no turning off the highway, meaning far less conflict sources, meaning traffic is fluid by default. The best way to have a LOS of A in cities is to have no city in the first place.
You two are doing a fabulous job. Thank you.😊😊❤
Fantastic video. I really appreciate your approach to communicating these issues.
If 100% road capacity is the max amount of traffic before slowdown, then 100% housing occupancy is the maximum unit occupancy before decrease in QOL. If enough additional units are built housing unit occupancy should decrease.
"Supply can never match demand" is such a silly thing to believe. "No matter how much I eat, I will be hungry!"
One issue is that going beyond 2 lanes in the travel direction the benefit isn't as large. Going from 2 to 4 lanes does not double capacity. It does increase capacity by less then 60%. Building even wider requires even more complex planning with express lanes ramps and underpasses.
As soon asbyou hit an intersection it get's even more difficult and wait times longer.
I think the problem with "induced demand" is that it implies that the demand wouldn't be there if you didn't induce it. Induced demand only happens because the pre-existing demand hasn't been satisfied.
you highly underestimate how much people hate moving
Great video!! Another way to say it is building low capacity and low density housing has almost drawbacks to low capacity and low density transportation. If you build out single family detached homes you will have some similar issues to building car infrastructure. Specifically, there won't be enough for everyone. But if you build townhomes, apartments and bus/bike lanes you will have a better time keeping up with demand for everyone.
Although sometimes "one more lane" do fix the problem, it's usually fixing an issue of merging then unmerging lane on a short distance. There are usually some fine tuning to do with trafic fluidity, but at one point, there's no way around changing mode of transportation for a more efficient one.
As for Toronto precisely, the main problem is not they need more lanes, it's housing close to downtown is impossible for 99% of the population. They need to move always farther, and use ever more length of road to move around daily. There needs to be options for young families between the 1 bedroom studio downtown and 1+ hour away exurb detached house, at a price the median young couple can afford. Less commute means less need for one more lane.
And then, obviously, at a certain point, you need to start using mass transit seriously. Tokyo, London, Paris or New York wouldn't work without the various rail transit. Sure, not everyone use them, but the one that do leave room for the others. 500 students on buses and trains is 500 cars out of the trafic, and 500 parking spaces more on the campus. Then 500 students housed on the campus ground is 500 places left in the transit and car trafic.
Excellent video as usual, but there is one major issue with this comparison that this video misses.
Even with horrible car-centric infrastructure, the alternatives to driving are still there, and worst case, you avoid making some trips you would otherwise make to avoid bad congestion, dangerous conditions, or poor service of the alternatives.
The alternative to having enough available / affordable housing is widespread homelessness, which is currently going on in much of the western world.
Also honestly, one of the major solutions to homelessness is also getting corporations out of owning homes as a commodity, and applying penalties to unoccupied homes. There are more unused homes in the US than homeless people, as one example.
You did not seem to mention the biggest difference: Lack of alternatives.
In many places, if driving is not an option, I can bike or take public transit instead. That is not the case for housing. There is no massive supply of housing in the suburbs that people could use instead. It has to be built somewhere.
An issue not considered here is that housing supply is unfortunately consumed not just by people needing to live somewhere but also as an investment vehicle. A cycle of high prices leading to new construction being primarily purchased by investors willing to leave units empty instead of purchased for residence driving prices higher may be seen as comparable to roadway induced demand. Housing construction can still be ineffectual without policies that will either deter investors or encourage investors to make the properties available on the rental market so that they still function as housing.
"Just one more shipment of light bulbs, bro" - I almost spit out my lunch 😂
the issue with induced demand is that the more lanes you build, the less efficiently they will be used, unlike housing. No, a 256 lane highway would not fix traffic, it would cause tons of merging accidents.
It’s not road space that we run out of. It’s space-time.
And the shortage of space-time at peak usage times is, as you said, caused by not charging a price.
If we had to pay more based on demand, we could keep traffic from reaching critical density.
We could sell access to a road in advance but also have a spot price that fluctuates. We could allow people to pay a fixed price for a regular trip but have a dynamic price for those who haven’t scheduled a trip. Then those who scheduled a trip in advance could SELL their access for the spot price if there is unexpected congestion.
You might be about to leave and get an offer of $10 above what you paid if you delay your trip by an hour. You could take the offer and find something else to do for an hour. Or ignore the offer.
Or you might not accept it quickly enough and find the offer was already accepted by others. Or it might keep going up to a price you can’t resist.
The net effect, ideally, is that you keep the system flowing no matter what happens by charging a high spot price when things go wrong. But you also allow people to plan ahead with predictable pricing.
I think another point is that increased housing density creates a strain on existing infrastructure like roads, electricity, water, gas, sewer, telecom, etc. But of course, as long as these things aren't affected, we should still build more housing.
"If we build more housing, people will just live in bigger dwellings or better locations!" the NIMBY crowd says, threatening us with good times.
i'm not canadian so i'm quite baffled by this entire highway 401 thing
adding tolls on the 401 would be unpopular as you said, but why would they spend money on widening it instead of removing the toll on the 407 to spread out traffic? Or, just from a look on a map, why not a new highway from pickering to vinegar hill, so cars could switch without wasting time doing a weird longer Z-shaped route?
basically anything else would be better and cheaper than the tunnel idea
You forgot investors. Investors would be the cause of induced demand. If a city is seen as in demand to live in and more housing is built, corporations and foreigners will see it as an investment opportunity, to buy them as rentals. And then as landlords can intentionally leave units empty to force prices to stay high.
The 'tunnel under the 401" is probably Ford trying to force people on to the 407 or the new 413. What really needs to happen is a train parallel to the 401 or running down the middle of it; ideally a GO line or something of the same capacity, running orbitally across the top of the GTA and intersecting with all the other GO lines.
No, the arguments definitely still apply. With land being fixed in supply, it doesn't make sense to dedicate more and more land to the least land-efficient method. In transportation's case, this means more car lanes. In housing's case, this means more single-family homes.
Both of these things still exist in a healthy market, but alongside more efficient alternatives (public transit and higher-density housing).
It's quite insane that people even think that building more housing is bad. More housing is always good. Unlike transport, housing is a basic necessity that has no alternatives.
You can live a good life without commuting, even without living on a farm and instead in the downtown. But you can't even live poorly without a home, and without a home, you can't even start trying to get the necessities of an independant and fulfilling life.
After all, who'll hire you if you can't even take a shower before your job interview, or even work a at home job without a home to work out of?
The down side of increasing housing supply is the lower prices will increase demand back to equilibrium again, in a similar way to induced demand for roads, as the city becomes more viable to live in. Which has the effect of drawing people into the city who didn't live there before. This is obviously good for the economy, but it puts more strain on the existing infrastructure and services and the already congested roads will get even MORE congested because there's now more people living there and trying to get around. Mind you, on the flip side, it means less long distance commuting, so perhaps that's good. But you will need to build your infrastructure to match the additional housing. Another thing is you may not want a particular city to grow too large. In the UK, we have a problem that London is a massive magnet for people and jobs, and all the investment goes there. Meanwhile all the other cities in the country suffer. You could argue that London isn't expensive ENOUGH and that no more housing should be built there, but instead, loads should be built in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, etc, along with much better local and long distance transit, to encourage people away from London and spread people out a bit more.
It used to be the same here in Sweden. People were focusing more and more on large cities rather than smaller towns and communities. Now (at least for Stockholm) people moving in and out are roughly equal (a couple hundred in or out). However, the cities still continue to grow because of babies and immigrants (tens of thousands increase). Different problem, but at least we're not abandoning the countryside.
@@AnotherDuck How did they make that happen? Was it just investing in the smaller cities vs Stockholm etc? The UK government is unfortunately too London centric and it gets the best of everything.
@@mdhazeldine Not actually sure. Overall media attention has been more positive to the countryside, and more negative towards cities. In particular with the current focus on crime. Which hasn't actually increased, just changed (for the worse, but still), but listening to media you'd think there's a civil war going on.
8 lines should be limit. 4 lines per one way. Three lines for regular use and one extra line for bus, train, or emergency service only.
Another clear and compelling piece! This channel is consistently great
Claiming induced demand for housing is like acting we are building villa's to reduce the lack of housing. I'm sure people will be more than happy living in subsidized villa's but I don't think that is an efficient way to solve housing shortages.
The biggest difference is that the world would be a better place if everyone was housed, but would get considerably worse if everyone was forced to drive.
3:08 have you not seen those old Chinese bike photos
Fixing housing would also fix traffic. People cant live close to their job.. So they have to commute
Your example of a toll working to induce demand/usage is flawed. People are still using the roads they have opted for a slower and hopefully cheaper route - they havent opted not to drive. In Sydney we have bus lanes and in peak hour we can have a queue of buses 2+km long across the harbor bridge.
Congestion is purely due to travel distance. The only long term solution is to shorten the daily commute, either by living closer to work, or working more from home.
This is a great one. Strong argument in a digestible timeframe.
Now I just need to convince all these NYMBYs that they need more housing, and almost 2k a month average rent for a one bedroom is not acceptable in a town with a University.
Guy who actually commented a comparison between more road lane and high density housing:
Logic has left the chatroom
Because of course, if idea A applies to things a, idea A must also necessarily apply to completely unrelated thing B
@@AlMc-j2y Exactly!! 💯💯
I’m trying to follow the point of your video.
We work hard to make places like Toronto more liveable. More homes, jobs, better streets. So more want to stay and more want to move in. That’s induced demand to live here. We wind up where we started. What’s the solution? And isn’t population growth good for the local economy? Well, yes, if you are a landlord or developer. But when so many can’t afford rent or buy a home, we need to reconsider. Population growth doesn’t just happen because it’s so great here. It’s for actually 2 reasons, it’s because it’s better than other places and because we have a better reputation than other places. If the Ontario government wanted to solve the housing problem, building more homes is just one solution just like adding more car lanes reduces car congestion:
Make other parts of Ontario more liveable and desirable.
Do a better job hooking people up with jobs and homes outside Southern Ontario. Sell these communities as alternates to Toronto better.
This is a lot faster. It can take over a year, sometimes 5 years to build a detached home or a condo tower. It can take a month for people to move out from the time they find another town and get set up. They talk about building 1.5 million homes. We can move that many people out in 6 months or less, without forcing them, without giving incentives. Just find them good places to live, they will do the rest.
People will say wait... that will be a DISASTER for the local economy. Ok, I know someone who just bought a condo in Thailand. Guess how much he paid. $8000 and less than $100 a month in condo fees. Now consider buying a shoebox in the sky in Toronto for half a million bucks. Where is the value? And guess if he will continue to live in Toronto?
Remember when all the experts said we’re facing an unsustainable population explosion? They now say every country in the world has falling birth rates and many are below the number required to sustain a country’s population. So now the same experts are saying we face a crisis of aging populations and we face impending doom of a new kind. But Toronto still wants to pave over our Green Belt.
Now let’s look at induced demand by building more lanes and more highways. We know that will never stop car congestion.
The only ways we have to reduce congestion is increase capacity of streets or highways or the overall transportation system. Or we reduce driving. That’s it.
Toronto’s Congestion Management Plan involves tweaking traffic light timings, send traffic cops to hotspots to shoo drivers through intersections, streamline when construction constricts street widths, fly drones over congested intersections and use AI to model congestion. Consider each one how much they individually and combined will reduce overall congestion? All of them are band aid solutions to systemic problems that need general fixes. So let’s look at the first go-to approach to reducing congestion.
Just one more lane, bro. One more highway. Raise the capacity of streets to handle more cars. Get rid of bike lanes on main streets or better yet, get rid of all of them! It works, it really does! But we’ve been adding capacity for over a hundred years and there’s only so much more we can do. What about reducing driving?
Compare the Netherlands to any site in North America. Watch street videos. We have a lot of car congestion. The Dutch don’t. It could be why Dutch drivers like driving there so much. Bicycling cities reduce car congestion by reducing how much they drive. They reduce demand for driving without forcing people out of cars, by making bicycling a very good option. We could do that and cut car congestion on the 401 in half or more, so much they can’t charge tolls on the 407. We do that by building bike lanes. Honestly, this could be the reason Ford wants to stop bike lanes. People know how much better it makes things and they can’t build any more highways.
It’s actually in the best interest to Toronto to see Northern Ontario prosper. The prices of homes in Toronto is pathetic.
"imagine housing was limited to one or 2 stories and it was given away for free" (not mentioned but also imagine building is very difficult due to lack of space)
This is the social housing situation in Ireland and the UK. But people still say oh no let in as many immigrants as want to come and just build more of them
@user-gu9yq5sj7c they did indeed. If you notice in my original comment I'm not talking about America, I don't have experience with your housing market so I limited my comments to my own locality.
I'm not blaming migrants personally, if I was in their shoes and the government was offering me a free house I'd absolutely take it. I blame the government for letting so many people who we can't support emigrate and then providing houses for free, rather than forcing people to either afford one on their own or stay with their parents like people have had to do historically. There's no actual housing shortage here either but housing is used so inefficiently with divorces and small families and young people moving out when they can't afford it that the market makes it look like there is one. The way to solve this is to completely reset the culture to value family, community and personal responsibility above convenience, but because people are short sighted and this would necessarily be intrusive the next best thing is to limit population growth, and the best way to do that is to limit emigration.
Driving isn't free. It is pretty expensive just like housing and is subject to the same market forces of supply and demand. Both have their limits. But in general when an inflection point is crossed building more housing does not solve the housing crisis. No city has ever built there way out of a housing crisis. If more housing equaled lower prices than New York City would have the cheapest housing because it has the most tower blocks. Even with high capacity 50 and 60 floor tower blocks the prices never came down. They went the opposite direction. New Apartments in New York cost millions of dollars. This is because the more housing you build the more it induces demand. The demand induces faster than you can build. This phenomenon can be see in any city building simulator game like Cities Skylines. You can just build and build and build until you fill the entire map all the while the prices just go up and up forever.
The only way to lower rents is though rent controls. Not supply side economics.
There _does_ seem to be a problem with housing being bought as an investment rather than a dwelling, and with people wanting to “protect” that investment by restricting further development (and services). At least, that's why I _think_ we have a housing shortage in urban California, one of the richest places in the world.
You are forgetting the root cause of the problem: Young couples making babies 🙂
Consider Mahattan which is pretty much built up and high density. But every baby that is is delivered by the stork will eventually require housing of its own. But how do you accomodate growing population when the city is already built up? Growing population is also the issue with cars. A road infrastructure that was designed when Toronto was a small town in the 1950s can't handle population growth after half of Montréal moved there after 1976 and Toronto became Canada's largest city. (Montréal, in stalling growth because of 1976/separation was spared the worse of this growth, but eventually the problm catches up).
From a transport point of view, the only way an existing city can handle population growth is via modal change. Even when growth happens in the suburbs, the need to travel to downtown still increases and downtown congestion becomes unmanageable, (and gets worse if you increase highway capacity to downtown). Modal shift to public transit/bike is the only way to hanlde population growth in an existing city.
What is truly needed is for for a country such as Canada to stop focusing on only Toronto and Vancouver and shift population growth to other cities.
When demand exceeds supply of land, then it becomes impossible to have affordable housing because the cost of land on which to built appartment buildings makes it financial ipossible to rent at affordable rates. So essentially you are forced to into urban sprawl where land on the outskirts is still affordable.
I just wish the city planners would make sure infrastructure is set up to handle the new amount of people coming in with the housing developments they approve. Liberty Village comes to mind in Toronto. Huge development that put in a massive amount of people, but with horrible public transit connections. Residents then chose the car as their transit option and with only a couple roads in and out the place is a traffic nightmare. I fear of the same issue happening in the Portlands. The Waterfront East LRT is struggling to get funded and I worry housing developments will go in before any suitable transit options. In Amsterdam, when they were creating the IJburg area, they made sure that transit went in first.
Charging for parking is another very effective way of reducing congestion. Although it does have limitation.
Counterargument: Increased supply of housing *can* induce demand from property investors, even if it doesn't induce demand from people who want to live in the new housing. China has this exact problem, of having a huge housing bubble, as investors have bought empty housing despite China's declining population. Much of this housing is low-quality "tofu dreg" apartments that have been built in the middle of nowhere, purely for the sake of investments, rather than for people to actually move into. People may be basing an argument against building more housing on their observation of the harmful effects of doing this in China, or similar investment bubbles in other countries.
Counter-counterargument: This is mostly not applicable to the USA and Canada, which are both growing in population, so building more housing is much more likely to be beneficial in the long term, even if it could induce a housing inverstment bubble in the short term. If a lot of people need homes, and even more people will need homes in the near future, building homes for them is just common sense.
A great debunking of the fallacy!
I do see one possibility for something like induced demand in housing. Many people assume that higher density makes a place less attractive, but what if the reverse is true? Higher density meaning more attractions within a walkable radius, more customers funding good transit... So, say you upzone. The supply curve moves to the right, market equilibrium price drops and market quantity increases. But now the place is more attractive, meaning that the _demand_ curve shifts right, leading to even higher market quantity but also higher market price. In this case, whether upzoning ends up lowering prices can't be determined theoretically, we'd have to look at specific places.
Like building more lanes, there's still a benefit in this scenario: more people getting to live where they want. But it's possible prices wouldn't drop. (Theoretically. I have no idea what reality is -- very big cities are expensive, but are they high demand because they're dense or dense because they're high demand?)
(There's also another reason for price floors: the higher costs of certain kinds of higher density construction, e.g. when you go from 3-story wood frame to concrete + elevators to steel high-rises. But this isn't about induced demand at all, just higher marginal costs of production, as happens in most goods.)
Charging for all large road use would only cause small secondary road congestion.
induced demand is good for the people that get to use the new road (even if it's full of traffic) and the people that get to live in new housing (even if rents don't go down). otherwise they wouldn't use the road or live in the housing! it's about what we prioritize as a society.
"Imagine if housing was limited to one or two stories."
You mean like suburbia?
You didn't really address how it doesn't apply.
Slightly tangential to the main point of the video, but I do think that we’re at a point where mass production of housing (commanded by the government) really is our only hope at this point.
Even if we opened the regulatory “floodgates” (which in itself probably wouldn’t be great. many regulations are there for a reason), it doesn’t seem like developers have the capacity or desire to quickly ramp production.
i feel like many of the lawnchair urbanists really dont get the induced demand. demand can only be induced if there was a large amount of latent demand, this happens to be true for most large cities but also very much isnt true for most other places.
personally I will never stop applying induced demand to housing. i'm just built different
I’d love to see similar videos about induced demand relating to bicycling & transit, especially compared with its improvements for car users
You can drive twice as often if you want to, you cannot live twice at two different addresses.