Posts tagged Induced Demand

  • 1960s highway thinking dangerous for Maryland

    The Intercounty Connector was a bad idea in the first place, but recent events have deepened the scale of Maryland’s mistake in approving this project. The costs continue to spiral, like the new $100 million cost overrun we found out about last month. And rising gas prices have made any hope of recouping costs through tolls increasingly a pipe dream.  Keep reading…

  • VA-11 candidates on traffic, transit, and density

    Tomorrow, Democrats in most of Fairfax and northern Prince William County will vote for a nominee to run for the Congressional seat in Virgina’s 11th district, currently held by Tom Davis. Since Northern Virginia has been trending Democratic and the Republicans lack a top-tier candidate, there’s a good chance the Democratic nominee will win in the general.  Keep reading…

  • The whirlpool of induced demand

    Each of our transportation choices, no matter how small, have far-reaching effects. Every day, people make the decision to drive, take transit, bike or walk. And every day, some people move to a new home, and choose the location of that home based on the transportation choices available to them.   Keep reading…

  • Meet the new route through DC

    If you ask Google Maps how to get from Baltimore to Richmond (or New York to Raleigh, or Boston to Miami), it suggests taking the Beltway around through Bethesda and Tysons to circumvent DC. But that may change.  Keep reading…

  • I’m an environmentalist but…

    Last night, about 150 people showed up for a DC Council hearing on Klingle Road. The Washington Post has a carefully balanced article on the hearing, at which about 80% of the attendees and speakers opposed reopening the road (largely thanks to good organizing by WABA, the Sierra Club, and others).  Keep reading…

  • Klingle: Even more cars in Rock Creek?

    San Francisco has the Embarcadero Freeway. New York has the West Side Highway. In both cases, nature forced the city to close a road which it would   never have had the political fortitude to do otherwise. In both cases, residents realized they didn’t really need the road after all.  Keep reading…

  • Induced non-demand

    Should we really convert freeways to boulevards? In my quick link Saturday about boulevardizing the Southeast-Southwest Freeway, TJ wrote, “the volume day and night is pretty heavy, so a street conversion would just make it a nightmare.” What’s the reality? We can’t know for sure about this case, but in other cases where cities have removed freeways…  Keep reading…

  • LA radically changes nothing

    The LA Times thinks LA traffic planners “do a 180” when they shift from building freeways (that increase traffic) to… adding traffic lanes on major boulevards (that increase traffic). But the city’s chief planner thinks the city isn’t ready to talk about better solutions like “complete streets”. Street Heat LA begs to differ. Meanwhile,…  Keep reading…

  • Parking reformers have some educatin’ to do

    Image by emily geoff on FlickrWhen Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, almost everyone from planners to the public believed in freeway construction, single-use zoning, and urban renewal projects. Today, you’re not going to see a lot of people commenting on a blog like DCist arguing that we should run a freeway between Dupont Circle and Adams…  Keep reading…

  • Three projects to watch

    All over the region, consulting organizations are going through the legal requirements for Environmental Impact Statements, necessary for any major project: convening public scoping meetings, collecting input, evaluating alternatives, and so on. They’re doing this in downtown Columbia, along Rockville Pike, and on both sides of the 14th Street Bridges, used by I-395,…  Keep reading…

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