What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Induced demand (probably more accurately called induced traffic) is the phenomenon where building or expanding roads and highways doesn't help congestion because it results in more people driving. This is often used as an argument against building the new car infrastructure, but people don't talk often about how induced demand applies to other modes. In this video we explain why induced demand does apply to transit, walking, and cycling infrastructure, but with different consequences.
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"The question isn't which types of transportation infrastructure induce demand... it's what type of demand you want to induce." Brilliant.
"If you built it, people will use it" - Not Just Bikes
Problem with cars is that you have a big SUV with 1 or 2 person inside
@@brackcycle9056 Not really. Governments these days seem very focused on "rules for thee, but not for me," and they want you peasants off their roads and off their planes so they can have theirs more conveniently and comfortably.
@@Soonjai Yea? Line 4.
The cost of public transport is often a blocker for getting the intended effect and I am not meaning money. The time used can increase a lot in going from A to B when you first have to get to the station, take the train and then get to your destination.
I live in a large city only by locale standard . It is the 4. larges in the country, but the area has only about 200.000 people living there. To get between the two larger centers in this area I can do that in a car in less then 20 minutes. Using the train, the absolute minimum will be 70 minutes, but more likely 80-90 minutes. That cost me 2 hours every time I do it, that 10 hours every week when you have to do it for work. That is a large chunk of our free time.
Well, a clogged Highway doesn't move, a crowded train will still move
A crowded train is useless if you can't get on it.
@@WerewolfLord In that case, it's no worse than a clogged highway that you can't get onto either...
@@WerewolfLord True, but most train lines where trains get that crowded run a train every 5 minutes at worst. How many trains would you miss in a worst case scenario? Like, two maybe? And you're still going to get there faster than if we used the space to build up a 2 or 4 lane highway that would fit into the space the train line occupies, because the trains are moving thousands of people every time a train shows up at the station and trains are showing up probably every 2-5 minutes since this sort of congestion only happens at rush hour.
It's shit when your train is so busy that you can't get on the first one, but it's rare and it's still removing tens to hundreds of thousands of people from the roads.
Yeah that's really the most important factor, traffic on a highway causes gridlocks but that can't happen to trains. If the train gets filled up you just add another and you can keep doing this for at least one or two decades until you reach the capacity of the line, assuming that we have constant rapid growth, in reality most lines will be just fine for several decades at which point they've more than earned back their construction cost.
@@WerewolfLord You have to have a ridiculously high ridership for that to be the case though, the kind that you can really only see in major metropolises like Tokyo, and you usually upgrade the line or expand the network long before you get to the point where you literally can't physically fit more people in.
"If you build it, they will come" PARKING. you didn't mention the P word. Inducing car traffic creates parking needs, and parking is an anathema to cities - esp businesses in cities. Foot traffic is the lifeblood of cities and businesses. Transit and cycling can induce foot traffic.
Parking lots really kill cities. Look at those before-after comparisions of aerial photos of us city centers. What was before a living city fabric with residents and lots of businesses now there is a skyscrapers district - just for d.ck measuring not because developers ran out of space - surrounded by a circle of urban decay, a no mans land where complete blocks were demolished and theres nothing just parking lots and other low level land use. The downtown is disconnected and lifeless, often separated by some interstate spaghetti junction.
Theres an interesting cathegory for these: non-places. There are Places in a city, where things happen. Where you want to be want to go, do some activity, meet people. Like homes schools shops parks etc. And there are non-places where you dont want to be. They are not destinations, rather just exist. Like roads parking lots useless greenery that separates them from people etc. The no mans land. The more non-places you have the worse is the city. The non-places make the city less compact, and that forces people to cars that generate even more non-places (car infra).
@@varkonyitibor4409 real cities have parking garages. the city I grew up in, Hong Kong, is one of the most walkable cities in the world. Most Hong Kong malls have pretty big underground parking lots. With enough density a city can have good infrastructure for both road vehicles and people. Hong Kong violates every anti car urbanist principle, yet its success in blending grade separated urban freeways (motorway) with a walkable city of excellent mass transit should serve as a blueprint for other cities.
@@yanDeriction I don't think HK could be a model for anywhere else. It's history and geography are too unique. The economics of underground parking and freeways simply don't work anywhere else. An underground car park for an average N. American mall would cost 20x what the actual mall building would cost.
@@atomicsmith That's because most American malls don't have residential high rises sticking out the top of them. It's not a problem of geography, its ONLY a problem of density. Even in places like Florida where there are added challenges to underground construction, ok, just build an elevated garage next to the high rise complex - HK has plenty of those as well. The city will still be walkable if you do it right.
@@atomicsmith The economics of freeways in cities are no different from the economics of underground/elevated rail. Separating different modes of transport is just a good idea, and the bigger the tax base, the more elevated and underground infrastructure you can build.
Tokyo has freeways running right through the city core as well, yet has top notch walkability and public transit. Freeways are just a good idea for dense cities.
By the way, we Torontonians call the Don Valley Parkway, the Don Valley Parking Lot. It's that inefficient. Great video!
But it's certainly a lot more convenient outside of rush hours. Although not a lot, trucks also use it
Slap a toll. East Coast of Australia loves tolls.
This is my take. During rush hours public transit is much better. But other times (if not going into city centre) driving is much better.
@@cityplanner3063 The problem is that Toronto won't do that. They won't make, say, Scarborough town centre to downtown Toronto faster via TTC than via the DVP. At least not until the RT is finally scrapped (which it should have been in 1985).
No we dont
@@SweatySockGaming according to Wikipedia: "Locals refer to the parkway as the 'Don Valley Parking Lot' due to the bumper-to-bumper traffic."
The main problem with induced demand in car infrastructure is that it's nearly limitless. As Houston and a few other cities proved so nicely in the 80s it's perfectly possible to have an area that's 75% roads and parking and yet still runs into congestion problems.
You'll never run into that problem with other forms of transportation. Like, if one train line per direction is somehow seriously not enough, you can build a second one, but that's still less space than a large highway, and realistically you're just not gonna run out of capacity on that.
At least in Toronto I've found that often traffic isn't just an issue of having too many vehicles on the road, but even worse poor road and traffic signal design. I can't tell you how much better traffic would flow in many parts of the city if they'd just improve traffic signal timings and if they'd build more roundabouts especially in new subdivisions that keep popping up everywhere that they have plenty of space to build a nice roundabout that could be more environmentally efficient to operate and also move much more traffic than any regular intersection ever could.
or you can add a few new cars onto the train. But the biggest problem with mass transit is you need to feed those trains/subway. Its pointless to add more trains or routes if you don't have the bus system going and collecting people to service the train stops. Otherwise people have to drive to the stop, which just defeats the point of the mass transit. If you are already in your car you might as well just drive to where you want to go. What we really need to do is condense down the cities and make the city imprint far smaller.
The problem is not too many roads, it's too many people and businesses in too small a space. There is a point where cities simply get too densely populated to be bearable but for obvious reasons nobody discourages people from moving to such towns or from businesses setting up offices there.
@@ADobbin1 park and ride can work for cities as long as city parking is extremely expensive. Park and ride is the ideal solution for connecting suburbs to cities
@@UzumakiNaruto_ exactly. A study was done on Milton Keynes in the UK and the analysis showed that four lane roads with roundabouts carried more traffic than six lane roads with traffic lights.
Bicycles do have their threshold where it more resembles induced demand for cars than for public transport, but only Amsterdam and Utrecht have reached this point so far.
Im a brand new bike commuter in New Jersey and Ive been watching a ton of urban planning videos with a lot of them mentioning and showing Amsterdam and I have to say, as much as I am loving riding my bike to and from my seminary campus and internship, I honestly dont think I would ride a bike in Amsterdam. The biking infrastructure looks amazing, but it does also look a bit crowded and uncomfortable to ride in. Im not confident enough on a bike to ride around that many people at all. (I dont ride around many cars on my routes i ride currently either, so im definitely in the timid category of riders)
@@CreativeExcusesGaming hopefully your confidence improves quickly as you get more experience cycling :)
As a tourist in Amsterdam it was generally pleasant and never to crowded when I was about (especially outside the city centre), so you could possibly avoid rush hour for a time that was less stressful for you. A nice thing about bikes is also that you can usually infer another cyclist's experience and give them extra space if they seem a little wobbly or less confident on their bike, so you might not feel too boxed in even on busier pathways
I'm a Dutchman, and I wouldn't choose to ride a bike in the center of Amsterdam if I didn't have to. The neighbourhoods with wider streets are fine though.
@@CreativeExcusesGaming If you ever would end up living in Amsterdam I think you will end up cycling. Yes it is congested in the center of Amsterdam for bicycles, but so are all other transportation modes. Cycling is simply the most efficient way to move around a city that has a medieval street layout and before the pandemic had at any time the equal amount of tourist in the city as residents. Also it gets much better once you are outside of the Singelgracht where most Amsterdammers live anyway.
@@CreativeExcusesGaming I think one of the real big differences is the risk involved in the two modes of transport. When there's loads of cars you can have some serious injuries, especially with highway speeds. Congested bike paths are an annoyance but won't kill you.
My prediction for why induced demand is only a problem with cars is this: Induced demand happens to all forms of transit, but with auto focused transportation the system as a whole is so resource intensive and inefficient that enough capacity simply cannot be provided, whereas with forms of transit, the increased efficiency means the system can come much closer to meeting the demand, if not meeting it outright.
Induced demand can sometimes be a problem in big tourist hot spots in combination with plenty of commuters.
Also: climate change, obviously. If we want to do something about that, we need to decrease car ridership dramatically, among other things.
@@paxundpeace9970 In the cas of big tourists spot, the demand is induced by the spot more than by the infrastructure.
Two other differences :
1.once you’ve widened the freeway, you still need a place to park the cars.
2. Transfer for cars is « free » : you may change road as much as you want (except toll) while transfers on transit will make walk and wait.
My instinct says that auto induced demand is much more attractive, because a significant amount of auto costs are not felt and/or seen.
Absolutely awesome video! This was your best one yet! The variety of shots etc. were amazing, especially of the O-Train!
As a Torontonian who's lived in Tokyo for over a decade I can tell you induced demand on public transport can be a major issue... But I still choose it over a car as its faster and more convenient despite any drawbacks.
Induced demand on trains in Canada and Tokyo are two different things. The density in Tokyo, plus the unwillingness of so many Canadians to get out of their cars means we're very unlikely to reach the point where railway employees are folding people into trains. The only exception might be Vancouver, where station platforms were built so short that train capacity is very limited.
Howd you move there? Im interested in moving there when im older
@@abrahamsalamah5773 finished university and took a chance on moving! You've got to be adventurous.
@@edam9461 In what did you graduate? on top of that, did you get a work visa? did you apply for citizenship? what do you need to live there? do you even speak japanese? lol sorry for all the questions
Over congestion of public transport is an issue in Tokyo but you have to remember that the population of the Greater Tokyo area is around the same as the entire population of Canada. Most cities in the western world won't face massive over congestion issues for a long time if they build up their public transit systems. On the other hand, think if Tokyo was a mainly car city, the city would just be 90% roads and parking lots to meet capacity.
I used to live in both Toronto and Ottawa and the clips just made me really nostalgic.
Another argument against greater car traffic is the extra required parking to accommodate the increase in vehicles. Parking spaces, just like cars, are very space inefficient, and don't generate as much tax revenue per square meter than if that space were dedicated to commercial or residential use. Thus, a walkable city center with access to public transportation can generate more revenue for the city than one the exact same size but requires a massive parking lot.
In my country (Singapore) quite a number of shopping malls have expanded into their underground carparks actually, making them smaller, probably as this arrangement is more profitable (more revenue from renting out shops than carpark fees I think)
The North American way to have wastelands called "surface parking" everywhere makes this even worse. Most European or Asian cities build parking garages to massively reduce the space needed to park an already way lower car number (and car size…). And often even these are considered as "wasted space", so they get apartments on top or are just build underground.
The argument for driving in Toronto is simple: do you want to get there in 30-45 minutes or do you want to get there in 1.5 hours? It's a stupid choice brought on by decades of neglect.
But it doesn't have to be that way. We need more rail/subway lines and they need to actually go somewhere, not just Bloor St., Spadina/University/Allen Road or Yonge Street.
Exactly. Where I live, it actually takes almost exactly the same amount of time to travel to downtown from my residence via transit as compared to driving (slightly less if you factor in finding parking), but then, I live right on one of the subway lines. Part of that problem is based on the availability of accessible and frequent transit. If I lived in Scarborough or Etobicoke (or as I call them, The Land of F#ck Pedestrians), with their infrequent bus service, poorly timed transfer stops, and unshovelled sidewalks, I would definitely look at buying a car over taking transit. A lot would need to change for urban planning mentality for City Council before Scarborough or Etobicoke can be considered transit-friendly to the point where people would consider transit passes over car registrations.
How often do you walk or bike to your destination?
(I'm asking for research purposes.)
This. If you're on the subway line, the subway's great. If you're not, then you're in the hell that is bus travel on congested roads with a poorly thought out hub and spoke system.
@@AronFigaro it's the last mile issue that plagues city planners. People are willing to walk only so far, maybe 5 blocks or so max before they want to consider a different option to travel that distance. Some will bike, scooter, etc. Some will drive, some will taxi. But there's likely not a bus route every 5 blocks that's frequent enough to justify not Walking
You've got it backwards for me, my trip into Toronto every day and back would be 3 hours using TTC, compared to about an hour and a half both ways in a car. After having to rely on TTC for 6 years I'm happy to say I haven't taken public transit in over a year since getting a car
I tend to roll my eyes at the induced demand argument as it's normally used - after all, if you double capacity and it's entirely consumed by induced demand, that can just as easily be phrased as "service is no worse, but now twice as many people can use the form of transportation they like best", which is tbh pretty awesome.
This is a much better argument, so props for that. It still boils down to "we don't want more cars", which is one of those sentiments that turns narrow-minded a lot (suburbia is a legitimate urban form!), but in the dense urban context, there's some valid reasons not to emphasize cars, many of which you pointed out here. So again, well done there. I'm going to quibble about some points of emphasis, but this is all legit.
@Nick Flaxbeard and forbid shops from opening to cater to people where they live where it would convenient. US style suburbia only exists through regulations and onerous laws forbidding everything not explicitly allowed.
The Parkways are so American thing.
"Look here is this untouched strip of nature in the city! Let's build a 6 lane road through it!"
@@aabb55777 I believe it was starting in the 50's and carried on untill the 2000's I think is when the very last price was laid. I read about this a couple months ago actually. I'm pretty sure the stated goal was infrastructure in general and connecting the country. Specifically the east and west. This is all verbatim
@@aabb55777 there are also plausible conspiracies about parkways being racist tools to exclude poor ethnic groups who take the bus. NY parkways ban large vehicles due to substandard construction with low bridges and lack of acceleration lanes.
@Sir.Craze-
The interstate highway system is a totally different thing from parkways. Parkways are short and local, not meant to facilitate commerce.
Roads need to go somewhere. And while occasionally there's an option with minimal land use, like tunnels or elevated roads, most of the time that means a continuous strip of land a couple hundred feet wide. Not many of those to be had in a city.
@@aabb55777 I don't see anything that supports your claim about most parkways being built under FDR.
@@yanDeriction Poor ethnic groups like poor white people?
Videos like this are really important. I saw that Vox video and, being new to the whole world of city planning and urban design, was convinced of entirely everything in the video. Not that the video is wrong per se, just that videos like this one help extend my thinking and consider aspects that a general intro video might not cover. Really well done
Glad the video made you think a bit more deeply about the topic! Yeah, the videos from places like Vox are a good way to introduce people to an important concept but they feel a little incomplete.
Induced demand for cycling and walking sounds like a really good thing, considering the obesity epidemic, the climate change crisis, the traffic problem, the car dependency problem, the rising costs of infrastructure development and maintenance, the air quality in cities and the livability of neighborhoods.
It's like induced demand for petting cute kittens. Sure, you're inducing demand... but that's a good thing in every single way.
I honestly think Ottawa is one of the few examples in which trains instead of busses made transportation worse. Ottawa had a highways specifically for the bus that went everywhere except downtown. They pretty much ripped it all up for a light rail system that does not save on time when it comes to making it from one side of the city to the other and they did not use the extra buses they had to improve bus services in areas where there were not many buses or they came once an hour.
You definitely brought up a perspective here that I didn't think of before.
The message in your videos deserve to be seen a lot more. I'm not going to say that often - but have you considered to use a title with more clickbait?
The title is perfectly clickable, it's the thumbnail that's...aesthetically challenged.
First time I've seen this channel. Took me a whole 30 seconds to be convinced to subscribe. That last sentence blew my mind, even talking about a concept that I (thought I) knew well.
In the end, the more safe options people have for getting around, the smoother everything will be. There is no bike infrastructure where I live, so biking isn't really an option. Buses only come around every 30 minutes and are often not on time. Some places don't even really have sidewalks, so it's clear that we have to drive.
Not much induced demand there.
@@stevencooke6451 Would be wise considering how much the town has grown over the past few years. Every time I leave my house I see new houses going up.
A bus every 30 minuts is what you get outside of major cities.
I live in a rural area. There is literally no public transit in my town. Bicycling? Hope you like mountains, you'll need to go down one and up another to get across town. On the other hand, if they built a bus line or train out here, they'd get very little demand.
@@spikesgirl11 Yeah transit doesn't make a whole lot of sense in low density rural areas. You can attempt to coordinate your businesses to be built together so you can walk between shops with common parking. Mix in some housing so people at that center can opt to walk/bike for things.
Around here with city/town adacent rural areas, they're more popular for folks leaving population centers to go out to cycle if there's nice wide roads with enough paved shoulder space they can get separated from traffic. But that's more exercise activity than "I need a few things from the store I can hop on my bike or stop on the way home from work."
Ultimately that's what the urban/rural divide is about. Different problems, need different solutions. And for some reason we can't get governments to sit down and address both sets of needs. Better transit networks in cities would however get locals off the road, so that they would function better when people from low density areas wants to to go there.
Loved the video and the notion that induced demand applies to other modes too! I think you hit it on the head mentioning the externalities created by different modes. Too many pedestrians and bikes in a single area can create conflict for example, but I certainly would rather deal with that than traffic congestion on the freeway and the noise, pollution, and higher cost of infrastructure per capita that come with it. I will continue to try to induce demand for transit, walking, and biking in my neck of the woods!
If you don't mind me asking, how often do you walk or bike to your destination?
(I'm asking for research purposes.)
@@deftknight7418 sure thing! I walk or bike just about every day. I bike to the train to get to work each day, go to the grocery store and restaurants by bike, I take my daughter to preschool in the cargo bike, and for many other reasons. I drive basically if it is long distance with no transit access or if there isn’t safe bike infrastructure to use. I am quite a data nerd too and have tracked all my transportation for the last 8 months and will put together my own personal mode split!
Very good video.
The reason why "induced ridership" is better than "induced road traffic" is that PT induced neighbourhoods create liveable, pedestrian friendly, sustainable cities, while roads create hostile, ugly, unwalkable and unsustainable suburbs. Also, as is menioned in the video, more PT makes PT better, even if crowded. More highways bring much less benefits to drivers, in the long run.
Last but not least, it is way easier upping capacity of a subway without major changes in land us, than increasing capacities of highways.
great video, as an amateur urbanist this definitely deepened my understanding of induced demand
I knew it! Thanks for making this video! I've always thought the concept of induced demand wasn't the whole story, and it's about footprint per person (or throughput per unit of road width). Cars with single occupants simply have horrible footprint per person. I understand that sometimes an enclosed, climate-controlled, motorized, and free-roaming vehicle is the best solution, but it needs to be right-sized. We need to replace traditional cars (when the full capacity isn't needed) with micro cars in addition to cycling, public transit, and other space-efficient modes.
This is obvious but really needed to be said thank you
Wow this is a great video! So concise yet thorough. I haven't thought about this concept outside of car transport but this really makes things clear and shows how important it is to advance other modes of transportation.
This is a well stated and nuanced argument. There are even more issues with inducing demand for driving than just safety, pollution, and efficiency. Encouraging driving means you have to make room for parking at destinations, and at residences, which wastes space (less walkable neighbourhoods) and makes housing less affordable because of parking minimums. It's also costly - car ownership costs around $11,000 per year on average, so in addition to increasing issues with inequality, it's basically a huge tax on individuals (in addition to the actual tax dollars required to build and maintain car infrastructure). Pus, walkable, transit-oriented communities tend to be good for small, independent business owners, whereas car-centric planning benefits big box stores.
... per studies on europe and brazil cars save hour a day doorstep to doorstep commute vs transit. If I want to spend $10000 to get extra 1 hour a day w family, out of 16 waking hours, that's a smart choice. It's hilarious people give such awful family and work advice to poor people, transit use increases divorce and slow career since others can stay late or get to office fast if needed..... Fuel and vehicle taxes do more than pay for roads, despite claims to contrary.. 80% of W Europeans workers drive to work, cars are preferred, it's weird to see so many facts skipped to try to lie that transit is great.... Go slip on ice and wait in rain daily, and then try saying a warm car isn't saner choice.... I admire the cultist delusion, it's like Islam but less open to discussion of ideas, cars bad cause trains look cool, ignore the 80% who choose cars in France we are the true religion....ha...
This channel deserves more subscribers.
On street parking is also a big problem. It started off with cheeky car owners leaving their car on the street but has now become an institution that heavily promotes car ownership and usage. It's a very useless and homogeneous use of public space.
@@aabb55777 baby wants his bottle
@@aabb55777 addicts often resist quiting yes
@@aabb55777 Of course they like it. But with freedom also comes responsibility, and unfortunately car owners don't take it. They want freedom to use their car, but they don't want to pay for parking. They want freedom to use their car, but they don't want to pay for pollution (air/noise) they induce. They want freedom to use their car, but they don't want to pay for danger they bring to others.
The issue there is that there's a lot to it. Around here they've tried taking away street parking and lanes of traffic, but that doesn't do anything when there aren't viable alternatives to driving. In extreme cases it can be the difference between a drive of 20 minutes versus an hour on public transit and a lot of people legitimately do not have time to do that twice a day 5 days a week.
Given that I live in Montreal and my kids are in Ottawa and Toronto (more young Anglos leaving Quebec's BS) , your videos are great as these are the 3 places you most feature . Well done .
This is a pretty interesting take I haven't heard before. Thanks for bringing this up!
Feel bad for that house at 5:34 . Driveway opens up right onto the highway offramp
It's so nice that you use footage from all over -- it makes it more interesting and more informative and reminds me of my travels :)
I was wondering where some of the trains featured in this video were located.
Guys, thank you (and the youtube algorythm...?)! I just started having the thought about (it bothered me for about a day or so) the induced demand "problem" (didn't watch more than 2min yet) on public transport etc.
the difference between induced ridership and induced traffic is that having less cars is a goal, so induced traffic is a negative while induced ridership is a goal. so the arguments still maintain validity.
Infrastructure budgets are zero sum, money spent on roads isn't spent on public transport
Would you guys ever consider doing a video on smaller Canadian cities like Winnipeg, Quebec City, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, etc. also I liked how in this video you showed more examples of transit in Canada like the ION and O-Train
I loved that too! I
I agree it would be really cool if you could do more videos on smaller Canadian cities
If you did a video on these cities you could talk about the effect of transit on smaller cities
I loved all of the footage!! Also the suggestion to do more videos on smaller Canadian cities would really interest me
It's going to take some time because we like to visit places and get footage, but yeah, we definitely plan to explore and cover smaller cities too at some point! We've even lived in some smaller cities ourselves.
6:59 This stretch of St.Jaques is truly a nightmare to bike on.
You’re preaching to the choir with me, but yea, I loved this video. Subscribed!
A bumper sticker that used to be on every TriMet bus in the Portland, O R metro 25 years ago said this: "219 cars are at home because I'm on the road."
I am personally amazed at myself for remembering that, and I am now glad I have because ain't that statement the truth!
"They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot."
A new subway line also tends to open up the network to people who couldn't previously access it easily. You're not just building another set of tracks right next to your existing set of tracks to run more trains on it, which is effectively what you're doing when you add a new lane to an existing road.
I appreciated how it was only on the walking and biking part they brought up the externalities, focusing on the efficiency difference with mass transit, as mass transit share many of the same externalities cars have, just to different degrees
Induced demand is a issue with cycling in the nederlands for example. The roads might be quite clocked.
This happen sometimes in London to but not to this degree..
I've never seen that become a big issue. I live in a crowded student city in the Netherlands, but bike congestion only slows traffic by a little, and demand is most affected by the university. The biggest delays happen at choke points where there's traffic lights or open bridges (usually rare along major cycleways)
The worst result of a long line of cyclists is probably that the occasional car can't make it through the mixed-use side street until the bridge opens because there are too many bikes waiting at the intersection. This only happens for about 15 minutes during rush hour at one of the four bridges that don't have have a car lane. There's two other bridges that do have a car lane but bike lanes are separate from car lanes around there so it's not an issue.
I live in Berlin (Germany) and the local government doesn't get this concept. Instead they're just slowing down cars and planning on outride banning them for large parts of the city, instead of actually improving the infrastructure.
Berlin's public transport system is pretty good, therefore usage is high but some areas in the suburbs are just not served at all and not even park & ride is possible due to the lack of parking spots...
Here in Southern California, there actually is a fairly decent rail public transit system. The problem is the destinations. Many of them are in the middle of nowhere. Minimum parking requirements and single family zoning inhibits higher density developments, even in these areas well served by transit. Thus, ridership isn’t as high as it could be, and frequency is low, and then detractors say it’s a waste of money. Hopefully, people’s minds are changing.
SoCal is weird, a lot of the higher density areas (such as they are...) don't have rail anymore. The purple line extension for instance should help a lot with that but I think SoCal needs a lot more rail in the high traffic corridors as well as TOD.
Just like bicycle paths, rail lines actually have to get you where you want to go otherwise they're useless.
Fake London (Ontario) has quite the extension of multi use bicycle trails that traverse the city's park system. Only problem is that the trails are primarily recreational and take you to the middle of nowhere, not to where you want to go.
i’m from so cal and live in toronto now, i’ve never been on a train back home, and maybe been on the bus a handful of times…. i really love not having to drive here!
Where I live new home construction only considers cars. Sidewalks may be added later. No bicycle paths. No public transportation. It's all about the cost. New planned surveys should include walking and cycling paths that go to a useful place. Converting a rail line is good but some thought needs to go into connecting it to useful places.
That is such an amazing video. I watch a lot of urban planning videos on RUclips and this one was top top notch in it's reasoning!
Concise, informative, and persuasive. Incredible video!
This video gives so many "how to turn a sphere inside out" vibes.
How do you figure?
Great video answering questions I'd never thought to ask
"Its still better to have an over crowed ontario line then no ontario line at all"
Truer words have never been spoken. The central line is so deep, dark and crowded I can feel the heat from hell itself as I ride it old, dishevelled trains (WHICH HAVE NO AIR CON). The descent to the darkest depths of bank station to catch it is fraught with the dangers of steep narrow steps, lying signage, and packed platforms to cross. And yet, when it is closed for engineering works, I grieve for its loss, and fair London feels a worse place without that wretched line.
Appreciate and support your underground lines. They deserve it. But also if your a tourist, just don't use the central line unless you want to spend an eternity wondering its halls.
Poetry
If they don't go on the central line they won't be getting the full London experience! Just maybe not during rush hour. It's possible to be too authentic.
Thanks for the advice. As much as I look forward to visiting and taking the tube, I've seen enough subways in my life to want to spend a normal amount of time down there.
Using transportation that requires 2 fingers to lift up ( bike) vs. 2 tons of metal just makes sense when can do it ( need buses, cars for older/ disabled people/ all people when weather is bad)
Induced demand is really marginal latent demand satisfied, the fact that you increased demand means you are providing value to people. If no one uses your route, it's not a good investment, is it?
Good video!
As the video says, people make both short-term and long-term decisions based on the infrastructure available. I think what you refer to as "latent demand" is strictly short term - people living in a particular place might switch modes if new infrastructure is built. But people will also make long-term choices such as, for example, where to live, and whether to buy a new car, depending on the infrastructure available now and likely to be available in future. So the total level of demand in any particular place will change over the longer term. This is why new lanes on a highway generally do improve traffic flows in the short term (because existing latent demand is satisfied), but not in the long term as they induce additional demand.
@@jammin023 No, it just isn't induced demand. The existence of the road has not created a demand for people to drive around for no reason.
If you have lots of people using public transport that switch to using cars when a road opens it's because the demand to go by car was always there but could not be realised, so people took the suboptimal option and picked public transport. Still, this is latent demand, not induced demand. They always preferred travel by car because it is preferable compared to travel by public transport and now they can realise that latent demand.
@@peepiepo You seem to have completely misunderstood my comment, or missed the part about how demand is induced by LONG TERM choices.
Not quite. Car infrastructure itself induces its own demand, as the more people drive, the further apart places need to be to accomodate for the lanes and parking lots, which induces further demand for driving (not only due to distance but also because infrastructure for cars going fast makes it less safe to walk and bike in the same area) and so on.
People will take the most convenient route - so if we get our public transportation right, we will have even more passengers (preference over cars). BTW, the Ontario Line (DRL) needs to be extended westbound and connected to TTC Dundas West (with additional connections for UP Express and GO Train - a multiple win). I've written multiple organizations, trying to appeal for this - much better return on investment.
What a great video. Thanks to RMT for sharing this, subbed!
One thing that can make public transit make more sense is changing the zoning laws to allow more density, mixed-use development, and eliminate minimum parking requirements.
@thelyniezian Unfortunately, the United States of America and Canada do have those, instead of letting the free market decide how best to use land.
A transit riser doesn't have to park and store their business or train downtown til the end of the day
Love that all the b roll while talking about Toronto is Ottawa and Montreal. REKT
I'm glad you showed that clip of WB Hwy 401 approaching Brock St in Whitby. MTO added a 4th lane WB between Brock St and Hwy 412 and it has actually created traffic congestion from Thickson to Salem, whereas it never used to be congested. It takes about 5 minutes longer now just in this 11 km stretch. Meanwhile Durham Region has been waiting a decade for the Lakeshore East GO line to be extended into central Oshawa and who knows how long they'll have to wait for the Durham-Scarborough BRT now in the EA phase.
Hamilton just FINALLY got regular GO train service
I wish Oshawa luck - when I lived there around 2013, the transit aside from the Pulse was...iffy at best
They're planning to widen the 404 around Richmond Hill. And it will trigger all these negative effects this video outlines. But, just because it won't work doesn't mean it would still people from doing it.
My husband used to have to pick up and drop his kid for visitation to his ex's parents house every week; they lived north of Whitby, and he didn't drive. Going up to to their house from the GO train was not too bad as Durham region's buses ran regularly from the station up north. But going back to Whitby station was hell because the buses only came about once an hour if you were lucky (and sometimes not even then). If he was picking up, he usually called a taxi to take them back to Whitby GO Station. But on drop-off, more often than not (to save money), my husband walked from north of Whitby all the way back down to the station, which averaged out around 2.5 hours (with nary a bus crossing his path the entire way). And crossing the 401 to get to the station on foot was no easy task either. It was on hearing this situation that I really started hating the infrastructure out in Durham region.
> MTO added a 4th lane WB between Brock St and Hwy 412 and it has actually created traffic congestion from Thickson to Salem
Yea this is simply not true. The 4th lane is only 1.5kms long and is more lane mathematics than an extra lane - mathematics is good, the 401 doesn't do this right but this section is. The Traffic you speak of has been there for decades. A few factors include the construction of the Lakeridge Bridge/Ramp, 412 interchange, Henry Bridge and Brock Bridge/Ramps. This construction has occurred since 2018 (Henry/Brock) and since 2013 (412); both have only completely finished the last few years. The 4th lane only runs from Brock to 412 to encourage travel to that highway. Most people don't use it as it's seen as acceleration/deceleration lanes and they tend to stay in the lane they were already in (which is an issue in itself). The Bottlenecking from Stevenson to Salem has always been there; for decades at the very least. Why does the bottleneck end at Salem? Well it's because they add 2 more lanes there.
In my opinion the worst part of the bottleneck is poor lane mathematics. Those coming south on 412 have 2 lanes that both merge into the 3 on WB 401. Then you have Lakeridge single lane merging into that 3 WB 401 lanes for like 50 feet before a deceleration lane appears for Salem. How it should be is 3 lanes WB under the 412 interchange (which will be 4 lanes very soon anyway and the 412 lanes become 5 WB lanes. The single Lakeridge Accel Lane can turn into the Decel Lane for Salem. This makes the 5 lanes seamlessly continue to the 5 lanes that randomly appear right after the Salem offramp. You typically have flowing traffic from here on out to the construction on Rouge River bridge.
A further argument here is that Whitby's Population has gone from 123,000 to 140,000 in the last 10 years. Oshawa has gone from 153,000 to 178,000 in 10 years. Additionally Clarington just hit 105,000 from 87,000 10 years ago. The AADT at Salem and 401 increases 3,500 every year and this is all without any additional lanes. The capacity already exceeds the recommendation for 6 lanes but any additional lanes will help the 220,000 AADT in that section especially when utilizing proper lane mathematics. Another note, since adding the extra 2 lanes at Salem to Westney for a sample size the AADT has increased 2,500 every year and this was the trend prior to the extra 2 lanes. After there was no Average increase, it still maintained it's 2,500 increase year-on-year.
The Go has not changed, Courtice and Bowmanville STILL don't have their Go Stations yet an even those in Oshawa still have to drive to the awkwardly location station. There is a chance that removing the tolls on 412 and 418 has removed some of the volume on the 401 but we don't have the AADT for that yet. 418 is still a ghost town whenever I use it but I do feel there should be interchanges at Bloor and a Semi-Interchange at Baseline soon enough.
I feel like a lot of people confuse the traffic with the construction. People freak out when the lanes are painted orange and take different angles than normal. Orange pillons narrow lanes and people slow down. The whole section of 401 from Salem to 115 is gonna be hell the next decade in construction alone. Also the Toll's on 407 do not help. As implied in the video as a way to cut down usage - people will just use a different route.
Excellent video, thanks !
Bad sidewalks induce more driving indirectly
2:51 the photo on the right is not a concept. It’s a mall in Lyon, France. It’s called the Confluence and it’s not a train station, the train only passes through it.
In Zurich, we have an S-Bahn system (rapid transit system connecting the rest of the canton with the city by train) since 1990. Since then, the number of commuters is way higher than it was before, even in % of population and the distance to an S-Bahn stop and the time it takes you to get to Zurich are listed as nearly the first thing in ads for houses / appartements. The system is great and I use it myself, but it's kinda suffering from its own success.
Edit: I don't know what happened to the number of commuters by car since 1990, but I don't think it has gone down.
As someone from Rural Ontario who is suffering from the lack of even greyhound service now, I can tell you that to reduce the traffic in Toronto we need more rural trains and busses in Ontario. Then I can get there without having to drive my car. GO has improved and has made it to Peterborough but still isn't here yet. We had bi weekly busses now we have none. We need twice a day bussing to induce demand at the very least. I do support more subway lines in Toronto and removal of car lanes from more parts of the city to induce more walking and biking
You videos are some of my favorites. Especially with the Toronto and Canada focus.
Toronto is so far behind in subway lines that it's a shame. Only two major lines, half a line, and a few patches of LRT extension that left major neighbors completely to their own devices only with cars and overcrowded bus lines; all of that is not enough to serve 3 mil people.
Yesterday it took me over an hour by car to get from Bay and Bloor to Front and York in Toronto - a distance of about 5 kilometres. I could have walked it in half the time, and by subway I could have done it in 10 minutes.
Then you should have walked
@@crohunter100 I would have except that I was lugging two suitcases, en route to the airport express train.
@@Argonaut121 its ok you rich front street boi, you can sit in your bmw for an hour
At 3:02 they show the OC transpo o train. Absolute disaster. I love trains, but the Otrain managed to be slower, more expensive and 1000% less flexible than the under ground bus network.
One thing worth bringing up is the Down's Thompson paradox. The Wikipedia entry states it thus: "the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport." In other words, people make rational choices and when you build a road in a city with public transport, the road will fill to the point where the speed on the road falls to the point where public transport becomes the better option (for most people in most cases - its a collective average).
In cities, there is always unmet demand for personal mobility. People have a time budget, not a distance budget. They always want to travel more and further. If you add a road, people will use it - again to the point of equilibrium (if there is a competing public transport network). The problem is the road will cost far more in terms of dollars per person-kilometre.
There's another corollary to this. If you speed up public transport, the road system also gets faster. Why? Because you shift the equilibrium. Something a lot of mass transit planners don't seem to have grasped. Fast mass transit makes roads faster and this benefits freight and commerce - often to the tune of billions.
Here in Australia, there are corridors where we have major motorways between cities and those motorways are becoming congested and (if common sense does not prevail) we will spend tens of billions widening/duplicating those motorways. This is the best argument for high speed rail. For the same bucket of money, you move far more people, faster than you would if instead you simply augmented that motorway. In other words, its not about the cost of building high speed rail, its about the cost of not building it. By the same token, some cities could do with faster trains and for the same reason - obviating the cost of more intra-city roads.
@@aabb55777 The simple answer is yes. At least for the most critical corridors.
All types of traffic facilities come with induction of demand. However, in the USA, the facilities for car traffic have been blown up so far, that it's no longer possible to even determine the facilities allocated to them.
So, as a though experiment, think of two ghost towns in Louisiana, and determine all that is needed to start air-boat traffic between them. And remember, the towns may be empty now, but if you add traffic, you will add people.
This is SUCH an awesome video! it's all too common to see videos that repeat the same points but with fancier shots and graphics, but you guys bring up excellent points that build on previous arguments. Loving the stuff yall put out!!!
It almost seems that quality of information is generally inversely proportional to how pretty the video is as a general phenomenon on RUclips.
The parking issue is also important in choosing whether to build roads or mass transit. It’s impossible to provide enough parking in a city centre to match the potential demand. If you do put in vast areas for parking, your city will end up looking like the sort of perpetual suburbia that you get around many large US cities. A vibrant city centre requires people to be able to travel around it on foot (with some help from mass transit), and you can’t have that if the city centre is filled up with car parks. The great cities of Europe (London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna etc) rely on public transport, and are pleasant places to be, although they could be even better if fewer cars made it into their centres.
I hope your videos induce a lot of demand to your channel
One of the problems with transit in the GTA is it only works if you are going downtown. It is a total pain the ass to go east-west. Thus not convenient for everyone.
One of the bigger problems, as I see it, with inducing demand for car traffic is you're necessarily inducing demand for car storage at each end of the trip, too. Zero car families might become one car families, one might become two cars. Two cars from a suburban dwelling out on the road, for different reasons at the same time, taking up two car parks when they reach the city. Maybe one is going grocery shopping while the other is doing the school run. However many inbound cars your highway handles per hour, the parking at the target area has to handle at least that much, which means bulldozing whole blocks of viable shops for parking lots, and choking main roads in the city heart to accommodate on-street parking. When drivers, who by and large are a soft, wimpy lot, can't park immediately at the front door of whatever shop they're visiting, as though they are the only customer that could possibly be important enough to deserve it, they get frustrated, and just keep driving to the big box store, or the mall, or the supermarket, to park in the asphalt desert, and they aren't walking all the way back, they'll just do their shopping where they parked. The induced demand of widened or added roads paradoxically kills businesses.
Transit riders, on the other hand, don't bring any of that parking demand with them. They get off the train or tram, and shop in the vicinity of their stop, sometimes boarding transit lines again for a short hop to a few streets further on. Cyclists bring a parking demand with them, but how many bikes do you think could fit in a car parking space? Six? Ten? Plenty of shops have a bike rack by their entrances, too.
When I suggest no-car or low-car streets in Melbourne, I always get the response "but what about the disabled?", disingenuously asked by people who just want to keep driving their SUVs for small trips. For some (not all) mobility disabilities, e-bikes and scooters (both mobility and otherwise) may actually be _more useful_ for the users than personal cars, ride-share, or taxis. Not every disabled person is confined to a chair, and not every wheelchair user has the same difficulties and needs. Being able to ride their mobility device to the door, or right into the shop, in the relative safety of bicycle infrastructure (compared to car infrastructure) is a big win for the disabled. If you're so immobile you _need_ a car of your own to get you there, you probably didn't go alone, and your friend, carer, or support worker can help you if you've had to park a street over, and if you got there alone and don't have a support worker, then you're clearly pretty resourceful and independent, anyway. Having had people of varying disabilities around me all my life, I know I have a pretty blasé view of what they should be able to handle on their own, but they don't need the coddling that people with no experience of disability to force on them.
The disability part really frustrated me. Most people couldn't care less about whether a disabled person can participate in society. Welfare? "Waste of money, they should just try harder." Handicapped parking? "Why should they get special treatment" Mental disorder? "Doesn't exist." Any sentence involving words like "suicide", "anorexia", or "PTSD"? "How dare you inconvenience me by bringing up that topic."
But then they turn around and say this. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if it were _only_ a completely baseless argument, but it's completely disingenuous, only said to make themselves look good. It's as though the very people they pretend to care about are nothing more than a tool to justify their own laziness.
And I do feel confident in saying that it's the same people making those arguments as people who don't give a crap, because the alternative would imply that they're aware of what kinds of disabilities people can have, and how that impacts their lives. As in the absolute basics of being an accessibility activist.
Sorry, rant over
I think the reason induced demand for public transport or bikes are not discussed much is because we don't usually even get to that stage. The level 1 argument is usually drivers saying "I support adding another lane to reduce traffic I experience" or conversely "traffic will be worse for me if this car lane gets converted to a bus/tram/bike lane", and induced demand is the quickest rebuttal to this.
It doesn't usually get past that, but if it did then concerns about inducing too much public transport demand would be unlikely to be raised anyway. As you say at the start of the video, basically everyone agrees that public transport is more efficient for moving large numbers around, and pretty much everybody would at least like more _other_ people taking the bus or train, even drivers.
Also worth mentioning here: New highways, widened roads and so on and usually proposed as a way to reduce congestion. Induced demand makes this not actually work. Even if you add more highways or streets to the city so you can get more cars from neighbourhood A to neighbourhood B, you still have the same finite capacity for cars at either end. The induced demand can make that problem worse, especially when it comes to rush hour.
New subways, bus routes, etc aren't really intended to relieve congestion on other routes. The Ontario line is something of an exception there, brought about by Toronto just not expanding it's transit infrastructure for decades and even then it only needs to relieve a fraction of the load on the Yonge line to do that fulfill that.
A new subway line exists far closer to the purpose of highway/road access to *new* development than it does to increasing highway/road capacity for existing development.
Excellent Video!
Brilliant video. I love that you tackled a commonly talked about subject, but from a different angle. One other way to reduce demand for cars: Reduce parking availability, charge for parking and make parking costs high. If it takes you 20 minutes to find a parking space, and then it costs you $50/day to park there, are you going to go by transit, even if it takes longer? Probably, unless you have a really compelling reason to drive (like you're carry a lot of things with you).
here's another way to reduce demand for cars: make the alternatives better.
why is it alternative transportation advocates all seem to favor a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" attitude towards cars?
@@kenbrown2808 because desperate times calls for desperate measures
@@whythehecknot5038 reminds me of the people who say "we'll do anything to get things back to normal" and when we tell them to put a piece of cloth over their nose and mouth they freak out and start spitting at people.
@@kenbrown2808
LMAO
Thank you for a great video! Was very exciting to see Ottawa in the video 🥰
I really appreciated this video. Ever since learning about Induced Demand, I had wondered if it wouldn't just result in the same problem where any benefits and reduction in traffic are lost as induced demand takes hold. I had suspected that efficiency was part of it, and I always suspected there was some reason induced demand was not as much of a problem with other transportation methods, but I was glad to see a further breakdown of the topic.
Induce demand can also be applied for all transportation modes including roads, biking, transit, buses. It just depends on the positive and negative impacts
I love this topic! I think induced demand is a concept that needs to be applied and understood much more broadly. Of course it applies to all forms of transit in interesting ways as you've covered here, but I've also been trying to put a lot of thought into how induced demand might apply to other things like housing and gentrification. Overall, great video!
Glad you liked the video! I've actually been thinking about how induced demand applies to housing recently too. We might make a video on that in the coming months.
I've been told this since I was a kid: if you live in a city it's better to travel by public transit because it's cheaper. a car only gives you the luxury of convenience.
Such an incredibly well articulated video! Thank you for tackling this, I guess I never even thought about this as a potential issue and discussion but it's valuable to understand the benefits and the reasons why induced traffic is viewed as negative. I also never thought about induced demand applying to public transit as well.
Une vidéo très approfondie , et qui aborde des questions généralement ignorées à propos du trafic induit! Bravo!
In theory it's same issue but it takes a lot of traffic to fully saturate the capacity in most transit options, but it's very easy to use up the extra capacity of a lane of roadway.
building new road: big (both physically and in terms of money) investment for little traffic increase, and congestion are still here
building new train/subway line; making city more walkable etc.: still expensive, but less changes are needed and in the end everyone gets there faster, and there are much more people that use it.
Near me there couple of year ago an old rail line was restored to use by commuter trains. At first demand was small and there were talks to decrease amount of trains running.
Fortunately that didn't happen and in the few short years after it opened it's reaching capacity in rush hours, and now the whole line is being upgraded to include couple more stops, and more importantly electricity lines so the line can use same stock as other commuters lines (and basically all other trains) in area, allowing bigger and more trains.
Fantastic video. Very well-made and highlights the key points for understanding what's so bad about inducing demand for cars in particular.
True, we need induced demand for mode shift to rail for both trucks and passengers.
Incredible video! You guys definitely deserve more viewers: the explanation was really clear and concise, and definitely brought up a lot of details about induced demand that I haven't seen before in other urban planning videos or articles.
When I arrive at my destination on a subway I don't have to look for somewhere to park the subway, and I like that.
I understand all this but cars and superior to buses. Go where you want when you want.
If you only consider convenience. Sure. Consider more or less any other factor, busses are better.
Yeah, but you don't tho.
Queuing theory explains how cars queue into traffic jams, something that does not happen for trains and happens to a much lesser extent for pedestrians and bikes.
The end result is that you can never build enough highway capacity to satisfy the commute needs of a large suburban area, because too much area is needed.
al gore rhythm
Clever!
Awesome video!
So it looks like there are two forms of induced demand which can each be related to marginal values in some way. Short term you get mode switch plus an absolute change in total demand. Long term you get population movement and changes in infrastructure which may lock in current solutions or at least raise the costs of the possible changes. The problem is that we are locked in. Another way is to see it as being trapped into a series of local Optima that does not converge on anything close to a global optimum. This process has been favoured by weighting demand in a way that implicitly favours individuals with more money.
There is also the fact that a bus or a train takes up the same amount of space regardless of whether 2 or 50 passengers are riding, while two cars - usually with just one passenger each, takes up the same amount of space as a bus
Things could be different in East Asia when 33-storey condos suddenly appear in all nearby areas of suburb mass transit station…
I am a big fan of the "ghost city" model of city planning. where capacity for millions is prebuilt rather than slowly upgraded over time.
Brilliant explainer!!