What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
Absolutely awesome video! This was your best one yet! The variety of shots etc. were amazing, especially of the O-Train!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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...
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
"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.
You’re preaching to the choir with me, but yea, I loved this video. Subscribed!
This is a pretty interesting take I haven't heard before. Thanks for bringing this up!
Good video. Thank you for delivering the arguments to win a debate against a pro-car person.
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.
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 UA-cam.
Used to take me 8-12 minutes to cross Toronto to my parents on the Gardiner. Had the Martin Goodman Trail to ride my bike to work. Then the Council started making changes. Now it takes close to an hour to cross Toronto with lots of idling. Subway involves 40 minutes of walking, waiting for the train, and the time to cross the city. For some reason every other time I come back to the city it's out of service, and shuttle buses are running. I gave up cycling to work, when it became dangerous from the TTC & road infrastructure changes. Might be better now, but I'm not sure about going from/to the MGT up/down Yonge or Bay.
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.
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
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.
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.
I didn’t get the yellow subway line in Toronto when I visited. The 2 downtown pieces are so close to each other, they should have spaced that out so it could benefit more people.
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
Glad to see another channel about public transit and urbanism show up in my recommendations, subscribed
What a great video. Thanks to RMT for sharing this, subbed!
One of the major problems with road expansion is that it delivers (vastly) diminishing returns. Doubling road with doesn't lead to double capacity, because now you require more lane changes which increase the risk of accidents, slowdowns etc, especially around exits. If the roads where those exit ramps end aren't also expanded, or if they have a lot of through traffic, that traffic can back up into the highway making things even riskier. Public transit (with the exception of buses since they're affected by cars) don't have this problem because most of the time you don't even need to expand on the underlying infrastructure.
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.
Here from not Just bikes and happy to have found your channel
Great to hear, welcome!
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.
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.
Feel bad for that house at 5:34 . Driveway opens up right onto the highway offramp
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.
A new transit line (bus, train, subway, etc.) that fills up with induced demand still brings that many more people into downtown or wherever, and you can build more interesting places where people actually want to spend time at instead of having to dedicate large amounts of space for car parking.
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.
50 people in a car is congestion, 50 people in a bus is efficiency. Especially when you consider less than two people on average are riding in cars
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.
We need to look not only at the inefficiency of our transportation options, but at what kind of society this has created. In europe there are small rural villages where you can still walk to everything very easily, because they were built before cars existed. You get more of a sense of community, and there would be more economic opportunities. Here in Canada you are limited by what you can drive to. Housing prices in the city force young families into the suburbs where you do not have community, opportunity, and conveniences.
We need to fix zoning laws in Canada. Put a coffee shop, thrift store, or even a community garden on your front lawn. That way we don't push the economy away from residence. I know this is off topic with regard to the video... I just think we need to look beyond the question of inducing transit demand, and look to why people are living in suburbs where they are required to drive.
Fantastic video. Very well-made and highlights the key points for understanding what's so bad about inducing demand for cars in particular.
I think the fundamental difference here is that transit gets better with induced demand (ability to charge less per person with more ridership, network becomes larger and more useful) whereas driving becomes a worse experience as traffic increases (larger roads with more lanes become a nightmare to drive on, parking becomes more difficult)
This video gives so many "how to turn a sphere inside out" vibes.
How do you figure?
I enjoyed the video but my comment's actually unrelated. I got a 25-minute "advert" explaining how to set up one's bicycle for proper ergonomics and the most common types of repairs one can do at home. That was cool.
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."
6:59 This stretch of St.Jaques is truly a nightmare to bike on.
I live in a university town where there is a severe bicycle rush hour. The main congested bike path is about five meters wide, at rush time everyone is going in the same direction so you can easily fit at least three cyclist wide, more or less wheel-to-wheel. Say three meters (bikes are mostly less than two meters long). The ride is about ten minutes even under this load for the 2 km length. In ten minutes we see about 2000 cyklists pass this bike path. That is abut twice the capacity as a congested six lane freeway (12000 bikes persons per hour), but the speed is actually higher as there are no total stops (apart from a red light). And the bike path is more flexible, when the direction of the mail flow of traffic changes, the whole lane is used for traffic in that direction. The real number is probably "only" about 1000 in 15 minutes or 4000 per hour.
Bad sidewalks induce more driving indirectly
Love your videos and that you always highlight Montreal.
Appreciated!
Man I love this channel. So glad it popped up in my recommended
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.
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.
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.
Lynngate neighbourhood from when it was built. By 1980 school was near Casa Loma. Three hours each way on the TTC, or a 35 minute drive? Tried that for a week, then never set foot on the TTC again. There is a great mass transit system in Toronto. It's called the car.
Excellent explanation of a bit of nuance I had never before considered.
Glad to hear it was useful!
@@OhTheUrbanity ... @Oh The Urbanity! ... Good video, building car lanes does help. 1. But wrong, cars ARE the most TIME efficient mode of transport though, studies of Europe and Brazil show this. It's why people blow $5000 a year on car, to save 1 hour a day for family and work time.. Saving 250 hours annually in work year at $20 is worth it..... As society, having people spend say 1.5 of 16 waking hours on travel is wasteful, vs. 0.5 in car, so TRANSIT LOWERS GDP??? China is building roads and pushing cars for reason?
2. CARS ALSO ARE LEAST COST TO GOVT, since in USA roads are $200b and fuel/license/carssalestax raises $110b leaving $90b for 300m users so $300per, but subsidy for any transit rider costa govt $4 a trip which at 500 a year is $2000.... Drivers in Europe more than pay for govt cost of roads, despite propoganda... I admire the propoganda, very Trumponian..
3. I ride kick scooter, ebiked till almost killed self, listen to cell phone to make hour enjoyable not chore! We need to use new tech and train new patterns. Govt transit only lets 25% of french or Italian or Finnish workers avoid cars, TRANSIT BY MATH DONT WORK FOR MOST even Europe. Statista com work commuting in France Italy Netherlands all say cars do 70-80%.... US is less dense by 3x, we ll never break 15%... Especially over 50 or under 10 so half won't do transit, transit is very demo and area limited.... I wish it weren't.... Transit people need to deal with reality, not just keep whining how evil cars which 80% of work commuters choose in Finland suck... 😮
Great video on a very important subject when discussing transportation and urban/city planning.
We often forget that the total demand for transportation is rather constant, but the ratio between different modes of transportation is not. If we add lanes to the road more people will choose this mode. If we increase frequency or capacity of the train more people will choose that (as a broad generalization).
The talk about induced demand is often kind of surrendering to the discourse that cars is the default (or only) mode that city planners are supposed to cater to. If the focus was on moving people and not cars our mindset when solving transportation issues would be much less narrow.
Cars is the least land-efficient mode of transportation, not only in terms of roads but also in terms of parking. Even if you hide the cars in underground garages instead of in the streets you are still wasting ressources and urban space. Imagine if we looked at a congestioned road and asked ourselves: "how can we remove a lane (and use it for something better)", instead of always asking "how can we add a lane".
Unfortunately it is way too easy to reduce the capacity on a train line and kill it by bleeding it dry. This cannot easily be done for roads. Maily because the cost of capacity is often quite variable (trains,staff,fuel), once you have the tracks. Closing a lane on a road will not make the ressouces used to construct that lane available for other uses. An underused road cannot be reduced in capacity to cut cost, so the train will always lose this fight. Especially since no-one ever really discuss if/how a road pays for itself like we always do with trains.
that was a great ending!! great video as always, keep up the good work!
Thank you!!
It is easier to add more cars to a train with more run times.
It is smart if new rail line has 'lanes' running in both directions with frequent turnouts at towns and other points to reduce wait times. This is better than making some trains late because another is due by in four hours.
Another way to handle initial congestion in areas with poor rail coverage is to run freight trains at night and passenger trains during the day.
Roads harm land hydrology.
Rail is preferable to roads in that it creates fewer impermeable, hard surfaces. Thus rail contributes less harm to water sequestration. It also allows water to stay in the higher areas longer, important to lessening flooding in lowlands, reducing wildfires and drought effect higher in the watershed.
Rail is a great place to have pedestrian trails run parallel alongside. Rail is on grade. This would mean bicyclists and others using the same easy grade would increase those who could/would use it. This would also mean fewer negative impacts on hydrology as well.
Rollouts (angled 'speed bumps' or 'speed dips' that diverts water off the pathway) would keep water where you need it as another method to reduce dryness at the tops of hills, without significantly harming traffic speed as is the case with roads.
The bike and rail could be separated by a treed area that would also create comfort, beauty and control water runoff.
Infrastructure budgets are zero sum, money spent on roads isn't spent on public transport
The limiting factors in railway capacity are the stations, as when a railway line hypothetically operates without trains stopping at any stations, they can achieve frequency rates of 80 trains per hour with the best signalling. If the trains have to stop at stations that capacity is reduced to 40 trains per hour. Now obviously a line where no trains stop is useless but what this means is that if you build a railway line that has 4 platforms at each station (2 for each direction rather than 1) but with only two tracks total between each station (1 for each direction) you can double the line frequency without having to add that much more track. Obviously stations are the hardest thing to expand on existing lines, but when building new railway lines doubling the size of the station won't double the cost of construction, in fact it would probably only increase it by 20-30% (for underground stations). Not to mention that outside of busy times the extra track at each station can be used as passing loops to allow for express trains to overtake slower ones. If new metro and railway lines were built like this, it would mean that rather than lines reaching their limit of 45000 passengers per hour per direction, they would be able to get up to 90000 pphpd for an additional cost of only 30%. It's also highly unlikely that any regular railway line in the world would need to cater for 90000pphpd because there just wouldn't be enough density to provide that many people around the stations even if it was high-rise central. So Railway lines may induce demand, but there are ways we can build them that almost guarantee they can't be overloaded.
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
Glad you are finally caching up with the Netherlands. We abonded car centric in the early 70's and now have one of the public transport and bicycle density in the world. Reducing polution, noise and improving human interaction. Havindg said that, every type of transport has its own role.
The Netherlands is 0.51% the area of the Continental US. For this reason, America will only ever have lots of public transport in select urban areas, especially since long-range passenger transport via train is almost nonexistent over here. Often a plane is necessary to make the trip in a day or less.
Sadly my fellow Americans can't see past a world of car dependent suburban sprawl, even though it would lead to a better quality of life. The fact even Russia can manage to give it's citizens public transit proves there's no excuse the US can't do it either.
al gore rhythm
Clever!
Good morning. Reasonably balanced production. In my 50 years in the work force I used public transportation when I could and a basic point you make is perfectly valid: even if public transit induces demand that then exceeds availability, it is more energy efficient than freeways exceeding new capacity. There are a few issues that you did not discuss and I doubt you would. First, public transit (at least here in the states) in almost every state MUST be built at prevailing wage, which I know from experience is always "provided" by organized labor. In some states, I think, they must be built with union labor. I can argue against this til the cows come home. Second, and I have witnessed this, when the union (again) public transit workers go on strike, people who have planned their lives around public transit are really screwed. Whether or not union labor is used in construction, sadly, is a policy issue and with our labor shills in government that will not change. However, and I have argued this publicly the operation of public transit could be contracted. The value of this is that while the operators are free to organize, the spectacle that some other company might under-bid them at renewal time, would put a bit of pressure to keep wages down... no we are not talking about starvation wages. Yep, I am in your camp on the use of public transit but these are some "loose ends" that affect rider service project cost and availability stability that should be nailed down.
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.
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.
Big question is how we make public transit safer in my view. No one thinks cars are more efficient, but I know I've never been exposed to quite the number of smells, diseases, and violent people while driving to work as I was when subwaying to work
Love that all the b roll while talking about Toronto is Ottawa and Montreal. REKT
I do like you acknowledging that induced demand does not scale infinitely. Many places simply don't have strong economic growth, so people won't move there even if the DOT improves the highway.
While inducing demand in transit and micromobility is generally good, it does demonstrate that they are in fact not solutions to congestion, only solutions to efficiency. Congestion will never be fully solved as long as cities aren't willing to give up tax revenue from new and existing developments. A bit of congestion is always worth it.
As for driving, more vehicles does mean better roads as well. Country roads are much more dangerous per mile than city roads, you want enough traffic to justify important improvements like median barriers, traffic lights, roundabouts, grade separation, acceleration lanes, right in right out roads with better safety etc. The interstate highway system is so great because it is a full featured safe and fast freeway across the USA regardless of traffic volumes, meanwhile Canadian highways lose their expressway features outside of the most populated areas.
Transit scales from a cost/benefit perspective. The more it is used, the less expensive it is (per rider). At the same time, it provides additional benefits to those riders (in the form of increased frequency, or express service). It can accommodate a range of ridership (lots of buses/trains during rush hour, not as many in the middle of the day). The ability to scale in this manner is why very big cities have massive transit systems that are both outstanding for users, and very cheap per user. Several Tokyo train lines have a fare recovery ratio over 100% (which means they don't need a subsidy to operate).
Automobiles are the opposite. As more and more cars use it, throughput actually goes down (there is an upside down "V" curve in cars per hour as traffic increases). If you double the number of lanes, you don't actually double capacity, because changing lanes causes slowdowns. There is no benefit to more and more people using it. From a cost perspective, it has a "sweet spot" that involves relatively few users, making use of it on a consistent basis (i. e. no big rush hour). You can expand, but this usually costs more per person (doubling the number of lanes does not double capacity, as people slow down to change lanes). You can build the equivalent of express service (express lanes) but you are locking into that pattern (unlike express bus service which is quite flexible).
Furthermore, you have to put those cars somewhere. This also doesn't scale. Parking become more and more expensive, and uses more space.
... I think dense cities came by 1900 before engines when all walked so no lawns and 5 story buildings...., then they added subways and tram and buses. This dense layout came from walking era.. US and Canada have grown 5x since then, Europe just 2x, so very different share is dense area, so Europe 30% can take transit, US 10%.... I want solutions but pretending US suburb with 3 people per acrea is like Paris with 300 is silly thinking.... Unless we ban lawns and ban single family homes/non apartments we get cars 90%....
I have heard some bus passengers in Hong Kong trying to say their bus should not be extended to cover more places because that would leave no extra space on the buses..
I’ve not seen tons about Ontarians falling for the sunk cost fallacy: the high costs of operating a car rationalize the need to drive
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.
Left out: Building up car-based infrastructure encourages development of car-based neighborhoods. Developers see the widened highways leading a long distance to the city center where the jobs are and build low-density housing. The people who live there must have a car to get to work. Developers take this into account and build mega-strip retail with huge parking lots and wide boulevards that are dangerous and uninviting to pedestrians and cyclists. They are also widely separated from housing and there aren’t good bike paths. So, just to live there, you have to drive.
Transit doesn’t work well, since everyone already has a car and many don’t want to pay for what they will not use.
Also worth mentioning is that induced car traffic also induces parking needs.
And petrol stations etc
10 years ago when searching job in İstanbul, companies ask which side are you living? Asian or European part. But now there are subways, metrobüs etc so now it's not important anymore. Induced city congestion.
The British Columbia government may disagree with part of this video. The NDP removed all road tolls as a way to improve equity on the roads. Not sure I can blame them, since tolling does seem to have a negative effect on poorer people who maybe cannot afford to live near high quality (or any) transit but can afford to drive (a cheap car, no doubt).
Great video! I can easily see this channel reaching millions of subscribers
Thanks for the analysis and information. Public transit, biking and walking trails Frees up valuable open space fora better quality of life.
Another thing about the "induced demand" argument is that people forget "demand for transportation." If a city is growing, there will be more demand for transportation options, period. Ideally, you pick a mix of transportation options that work for a particular city and encourage people to use the most efficient ones. You can even use induced demand to grow the more efficient ones. But failure to build for transportation infrastructure when there is a demand for traffic infrastructure is a recipe for disaster.
You also have Pyongyang with big wide streets and very few cars. What do they have? Government mandated affordable and dense housing in the city. Lots of public transportation.
What argument are you trying to make regarding our video?
Very few cars, because the average North Korean either can't afford one due to government-imposed wages and prices or is not legally allowed to own one.
@@shauncameron8390 You didn't really elaborate on the point though. Certainly you're not suggesting that cities need to be dependent on (or dominated by) cars, or else they turn into North Korea?
I think the city planners here in Portland heard the concept of induced demand, and got real excited.
"More lanes fixed nothing? That means we don't have to spend A DIME on our roads ever again!"
"No it's better than that, man. If we make the roads SMALLER, we'll un-induce demand! We'll solve traffic forever!"
And lo, for the traffic is almost as bad as LA in a city 10% the size. Everyone still lives in the suburbs but works towards downtown due to the old blob-style zoning. Those who live next to the light rail can enjoy a journey that's even a bit slower still than gridlocked rush hour at it's worst. Meanwhile the other 95% of the population sit and idle, emitting ever more CO2, waiting for the day that someone realizes that the busiest 500ft of road in all of Oregon simply needs more than 2 lanes, and the 2nd busiest stretch in the State probably shouldn't be a low drawbridge that cuts the city in half every time a barge load of sawdust needs to float by. Actually, the best thing that happened to the city's traffic was the riots. Half the businesses downtown left forever, and that greatly reduced the daily mad rush into and out of the city center. Those people all now work from home, playing Xbox and collecting checks. Now you can actually save time by leaving the highway and going through the abandoned post-apocalyptic downtown grid. You can really sail through there. I haven't even had to detour around a torched burning car in months.
Much of the same logic of induced ridership applies to cars too. If reducing cars and increasing density is a religious edict, then yeah maintaining or worsening a choked gridlock can seem like a positive thing. Consider, you have two roads going broadly the same direction (sticking to Portland, let's say the two bridges across the river). Both are horrifically congested 6 hours out of the day. Increasing capacity on one of them will help both, because the newly freer-flowing route will induce some of the demand away from the other. You increased the total capacity and increased the mobility of your citizens, which is the point of transportation. Now, if you're worried that a lack of horrific grinding traffic will influence people to move away from the city center, then perhaps you aren't interested in transportation at all but should instead erect a wall to keep everyone trapped. You've got to induce some demand somehow, on whatever you're building, unless you just want everyone sitting around. I suspect Portland is quite happy with keeping the WA side of the river hard to access; best to keep the livestock on the high-tax side.
You could fix the congestion and traffic volumes by making better mass transit in small places. Where I live buses (Greyhound shutdown its operations a year or so back) no longer travel at all outside the county and for years they had stopped going to the smaller places around. To get to a train station you have to drive 20-45 minutes if you are from out of town because trains haven't gone to all the small towns and villages for over 100 years now. In the 1890's they went to every tiny village and town in the area. We do have one intercity bus route but it only runs twice a day. This isn't often enough to induce usership which is the reason it doesn't run more often. The in city bus is not even efficient because it generally doesn't go where people need it to go nor does it run often enough so you could be standing at a bus stop for nearly an hour before a bus shows up. Walking isn't even an option because the place is too spread out. Its just easier and more efficient to get in your own car and drive to where you need to go.
Biggest problem with the DVP and 401 is the fact that it's illegal to bike on those roads. If we could ride on the hard shoulder like they do over in Sydney, I can assure you there would be way more than a couple thousand people using the motorway every hour.
Thanks, awesome explanation. I wish the powers that be in my city would see it this way.
A counter point is the Canada line in Vancouver. Crush load at peak times from day 1. The stations were not big enough to accommodate larger trains. Not that the line should not have been built but kind of bad planning.
You add a car to a commuter or subway train and it carries 50 people. You add a car to the road and you are carrying one person (most often) and also taking up more space than one train car, which doesn't need to leave space for the drivers in the front and back of them.
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.
I don’t have to drive the subway if it’s busy or congested, but I do have to sit there in bumper to bumper and make sure not to hit/get hit.
Instant sub with notifications on. Keep up the great work
Congratulations, this is really good content! Glad that the yt algorithm did some nice work here as well 😅
Hence the question. How could handle the ‘induced demand’ on road or on public transit and which is more effective (more economical)? Take the most expensive public transport system, the underground subway (metro) line. How could plan the enginers for possible growing demand a subway line? For example, they build stations to accommodate six-seven wagons, while in the planning period five wagons are enough at peak times. This alone is a 20-40 % growth opportunity. Mostly, the during the planning the densest follow-up time is not shortened to three minutes, but the ninety-second follow-up time is possible and even practical. This is another 100% capacity expansion. The most expensive part of this is the design stations by 40-50 meters more. It’s expensive, but not comparable to building an extra freeway lane for 10-20 miles. In addition, adding another lane next to a five-lane road is only 20 % increase in capacity.
East Toronto, lawl. That's a lot of shade for Scarborough. I love it.
Induced demand is an axiom, not a law. There is a limit to induced demand. It is so often talked about in a vacuum, but life is different.
Every time someone brings up induced demand, I think of a local road. It was expanded to 6 lanes about 10 years ago. Induced demand requires that it will move toward capacity in a short amount of time. 10 years on and it is still at a capacity that could easily be handled by 4 lanes, its previous design. There is a more congested (total and per lane) parallel 4 lane road a mile away, and 2 miles away is an even more congested 6 lane road. Adding capacity to the one, didn't have any significant effect on the other 2, and none on itself.