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Comment by awjr | Hacker News Reader

A number of cities around the world have removed highways through the centre of their cities without impacting congestion noticably.

Breass Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27_paradox

Removing shortcuts within a system can make the system more efficient.

Induced Demand/Traffic Evaporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

Build it and make it easier to use will generate more traffic. Remove it and the traffic just vanishes. Traffic Evaporation surprises many planners. The problem being that they assume traffic is just like water and must go somewhere else. Traffic is intelligent movement of individuals and people shift modes when one mode becomes less efficient either in time and/or money.

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> Traffic is intelligent movement of individuals and people shift modes when one mode becomes less efficient either in time and/or money.

I think it practice it often means for example taking less desirable jobs because a better one is now too far away in terms of commute time, visiting their friends and family less often etc.

Quality of life is always important. I've taken a lower paying contract within a 10 minute cycle ride from hom rather than one paying 15% more but over an hour by train away.

If you spend 100 more minutes every day going to work on the second job, and work 8 hours, you're spending 20% more of your time for work and only getting paid 15% less. That's bad ROI, even without considering the adverse psychological impact of a long commute.

That's assuming that the commuting time can't also be used for something else useful. He said the commute would have been by train, so it may have been possible pursue his own interests during the commute.

I once lived in Seattle and worked on the other side of Puget Sound. My daily round trip commute involved two ferry rides, each of which ranged from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on which of three ports on the non-Seattle side I decided to use.

I'd use that time to relax in my car, listening to music and reading. Or I'd get out of the car and go up on deck and enjoy the view. Or go in and buy a copy of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal from the vending machine and read it over breakfast from the cafeteria.

That commute was in a way a little daily mini-vacation.

That's true if the public transit vehicle is "wasteful" enough to have a seat for you. That's transformative: it's just as good as your living room. Unfortunately, that's not at all the consensus about what transit should be like. Shoulder to shoulder standing room only is the norm at commute time, even on systems regarded as role models.

I find such environments miserable, and certainly not amenable to relaxing or focusing on anything. It's stressful enough to find something to stare at and keep from falling over.

Commuting more than 60 minutes a day (in total) is not acceptable for 8 hours of work. I simply cannot understand why you would spend your spare time commuting. I have 15 minutes by bike to work right now which gives me a lot of time to do what I love

I could also say choosing where to live based upon where you work is unacceptable, but many people do it. In reality there are many conflicting priorities in our lives, and each person chooses how much each matter to them.

E.g. we chose where to live because of the schooling and it's close to family. But I work from home so it doesn't matter that it's a suburb. However if I ever got an office job I could be met with a daily total commute of 90 minutes. Should I sacrifice family and schooling so I can be closer to the job centers? Why is doing so any less unacceptable than a 90 minute commute?

Because if your industry centralizes in expensive cities, you think roommates are worse than a long commute, and you are not in the top 0.1% by income available for rent, 60+ minutes is what you're going to get.

>Commuting more than 60 minutes a day (in total) is not acceptable for 8 hours of work.

according to who? my commute is a combination of bus and walking and takes about an hour each way, but i actually kinda prefer it to when i lived close in the city. living in the city is not pleasant for me anymore, i can live somewhere i actually like, have time to myself on the bus to read/listen to music/whatever, and also get in several miles of walking every day.

Having gone from a 1hr commute to about 15min/30 by bike, I can say just the difference in psychological impact is well worth it.

when you are single the decision can be very easy, when you are married and even better with children it isn't so cut and dry.

you factor in things like, your spouses commute, do you like your child's schools, and more. throw in benefits, position, and seniority, and moves may suddenly incur expenses not seen on the onset.

my job has changed locations so that my commute is now six more miles that what it used to be but I would be loathe to change jobs because my commute is still "me" time and not stressing me

William Shatner feels the same way.

> I don't think of favorite roles like 'This was my favorite thing to do, and that isn’t.' I just wish they hadn't cancelled Shit My Dad Says because I could bicycle to work.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/10/17/150212/wil...

Indeed. A co-worker left last year because the effects of WMATA's Safe Track program on his commute.

Short of a bad marriage or a chronic illness, few things can ruin a life like a long, bad commute. I see your choice as being very rational.

And a long, bad commute can contribute to those first two.

I already wish I could have back all the hours I've wasted sitting behind the wheel, and I'm not that old yet...

Absolutely. It doesn't help that I feel like I'm "the worst version of me" in a traffic jam either. At best, I'm battling against my worst impulses of judgmental anger... at worst I'm just fuming.

The view of driving is going to be very different from the perspective of people who never had to do it, whenever that generation is born. Clean, automated cars are going to make our era look like Victorians living with coal fires in their homes.

long commute where you have to drive yourself vs long commute on mass transit are pretty different

Indeed. I get into a pretty pleasant mental place behind the wheel, even in traffic, while standing on mass transit is pure misery.

Never imagined I would care about climbing the corporate ladder until I realized it could mean cutting mass transit out of my life and living close enough to walk. The rent is at least $1000 more, but $300 less in fares will help, and not being on mass transit is priceless.

Absolutely this, and then the real estate in the 'job centers' in dense urban areas that have streets removed or lanes cut down to turn into bike lanes vastly jump up in price because you have to be within a bus ride or bike ride to work to get those good jobs, thus demand outstrips supply. Commuting 90+ minutes from the suburbs is a non-starter for most.

Look at how much it costs to live in SF, London, Paris, etc. Applauding these methods is questionable, it certainly doesn't help people trying to find work and puts up a barrier to entry to access these desirable jobs. Its massively gentries those areas which makes sure the only kinds of people able to get those jobs are the already well-off.

I find it ironic that HN'ers complain about SF and other big city pricing, but also encourage 'lock in' strategies like over-use of bike lanes, elimination of parking lots, and anti-car policies that only make real estate more expensive.

Don't be ridiculous. Very little of your 90 minute suburb commute is attributable to bike lanes and narrower lanes downtown. That probably adds 3 minutes. NYCDOT has done many studies, and sometimes it even speeds traffic up because there's less lane changing in dense traffic, which wastes lane-time. Adding bike lanes also tends to make motorists and pedestrians (but paradoxically, not really cyclists) safer. You're welcome.

Most of your crap commute is caused by too many drivers on the freeway and arterial roads, where you spend most of your stop-and-go time.

The bigger problem is you insist on an absurdly large amount of living space (which is what causes all the sprawl and traffic) If you compromise on this, then in most US cities you can get a reasonable commute at a reasonable price

Having lived in a hacker-house bunk, a 600sqft 1-bedroom is in fact not an absurd amount of living space to insist on, yet affording one (while keeping the commute to 60 minutes each way) requires driving part of the way.

It's hard not to scream at the people telling me I should go back to a many-roommates situation, or lose even more than 10 hours a week commuting.

The average car travel time to work in the US is 25 minutes [0], by the way.

[0] https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42...

Yes, that IS an absurd amount of room to insist on. No wonder we have a housing crisis.

600 square feet is enough for about TEN rooms of size 6x10 each. Think about that.

Maybe it's arranged very poorly. Typical arrangements make it easy to waste lots of room. Also, if you grew up with lots of space and have never lived smaller, maybe it takes a while to get used to how to arrange things more efficiently?

Source: I live in 330 square feet, and have for many years (though I lived in 300sqft before that, and it was too small -- mainly because of the layout, which was square, which minimized perimeter; railroad layout feels much more spacious)

We're seeing this happen in my city.

Areas that were on the verge of becoming urban wastelands 15 years ago are now upscale.

They won't ever admit it but city planners are trying to use economic forces to reverse the white flight of the 60s and 70s by pushing poorer, darker people out into the suburbs and attracting a more affluent, whiter demographic into the city. They're billing these things as quality of life enhancements but all they're doing is making traffic less tolerable.

This city has half the population it did 60 years ago and the commute is as terrible as ever.

I live in one of these areas and very close to my downtown job, and when I first started my career I absolutely couldn't afford to live here. Worse, the never-ending clamor of removing more traffic lanes for bike lanes continues on, even as traffic only gets worse. There's definitely an aspect of "I got mine, fuck you" at work here and definitely an attraction to keeping the 'wrong' people out. I find myself thinking like this sometimes and try very hard to fight it. I find the bike crowd is almost exclusively white and relatively well off and I don't think that's a coincidence.

I also think there's something wonderful about having streets and enough traffic capacity to allow people access to every part of the city and region. We shouldn't be building silos of rich areas that are foot or bike traffic only. Its just a big 'keep out' sign especially in my town where bike lane usage is low and 6 months out of the year unusable due to the cold.

>We shouldn't be building silos of rich areas that are foot or bike traffic only. Its just a big 'keep out' sign

I'm not sure what do you mean. Do you imply that poor people cannot afford to walk or cycle, only to go by car?

Where I live this is pretty much the opposite, but I'm pretty sure even where you live a not so well off guy can also park the car, get out and walk into a street reserved for walking. If those bikers are so well off, they probably won't steal the car.

Only rich people can afford the rent in locations that are convenient by non-car modes. The poorest drive the farthest because that's where housing is affordable for them.

Yes, in a big (in area) city, poor people mostly can not afford to live near work and must move by car/bus.

I kinda wish this would happen in my city, where motorists rule, and the brave cyclists are treated like inferior annoyances. I do agree these "rich" areas should not be limited to a select few.

Yes its really 'brave' to ignore all traffic laws and scream at pedestrians while you dangerously weave in traffic with headphones on and without a helmet because "bikes are more nimble than cars, so the rules don't apply to us."

Lets stop with the generalizations. There are shitty bikers the same way there are shitty drivers, the difference is shitty drivers get ticketed while shitty bikers function with impunity.

Shitty drivers kill.

> while shitty bikers function with impunity.

Plenty of cyclists get tickets, even if they're fully compliant with law, because some police are so ignorant of what the laws are.

You must disabuse yourself of the notion that it's the job of the police to enforce the law. It's their job to enforce order.

Here, the bike lanes are unusable from November through March but the mayor keeps pushing to have them added at the expense of car lanes.

All of the places you listed have massive problems with NIMBYism. If the places a 30 minute cycle away from the City of London had the residential density of Hong Kong, what do you think house prices would be like?

London and Paris both have metro systems which can carry you significantly further than a car significantly faster. In London there are not significant numbers of people driving to work compared with public transport.

> In London there are not significant numbers of people driving to work compared with public transport

Unless there have been big chances since 2013, about 60% as many people drive to work in London as take public transport [1] [2]. That's pretty significant.

According to that BBC story, as of 2013 1/3 of London workers relied on a car or van to get to work in London. 1/5 took the underground. Then came bus and train, then walking, then cycling.

According to one of the graphs in the report itself, which breaks down the categories more, about 28% of London workers get to work by car where they are the driver of the car. It looks like all public transit combined covers about 50%. Biking and walking cover about 15% (11% to walking, 4% to biking). The remaining 5% is mostly people working at home.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25175752

[2] http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/d...

The problem with light rail is that it doesn't go far enough. Whether your commune is 90 minutes on a commuter train to light rail or 90 minute in a car is moot. Light rail didn't fix the problem of absurd real estate costs in those cities.

Don't stop at 1 step.

This in turn makes workers' pool smaller, which increases salaries, and encourages employers to move to the better connected areas.

And so on.

> which increases salaries

In that now expensive part of the city that most people can't move to. And reduces them everywhere else.

> encourages employers to move to the better connected areas

Moving the transit there at the same time.

There's something to say about creating infrastructure at the surrounds of the cities. It seems to have worked very well in the last decades. There's also something to say about forcing (by government power) a change in purpose for the center of cities. But simply cutting the movement of people does not look like a net gain most of the time.

Right, people are intelligent enough to not go into a gridlocked city if they have a choice. They'll avoid it altogether.

This is the problem with this class of argument, and the one in the article. They rely on cherry-picking data or isolated observations. I haven't seen any of these arguments try to take into account transportation quality measures like travel time index, average commute time/distance, average trip time, physical mobility, number of jobs, wages and population over time, or satisfaction levels.

Most people don't drive for the sake of it. The 'induced demand' is actually fulfilled latent demand. People had journeys they would like to make but were unable to because the journey time was unmanageable. Building the road allowed them to make the journey. Removing the road results in more unfulfilled journeys i.e. economic loss (e.g. people being unable to take a more optimal job) and social loss (e.g. people not being able to travel to visit family).

It isn't so much latent demand as the cost/benefit of travelling in by car is better than alternative methods. The problem primarily is around the exclusion of other modes of travel from the system. Roads need to be built with space for walking, cycling and driving and should prioritise walking and cycling. This enables local journeys to be removed from the road network.

I wonder how WAZE interacts with the Breass Paradox. When I started using it, I noticed it could cut 10 minutes off my commute. Over time I noticed that more and more people were taking shortcuts, and now my commute is longer than it would have been had I just stayed on the standard route 5 years ago.

Part of that is surely the growing population with cars in the neighborhoods in-between where I live and where I work, but I wouldn't be surprised if WAZE somehow made traffic worse.

WAZE is interesting as is Google Directions. In effect they have enabled side roads to 'absorb' the increase in car use without having to deal with actual shifting people out of cars into other modes.

In the WAZE Driver Satisfaction survey, the Netherlands came out on top. I'm guessing this is because so many people can choose not to drive to work/school/shops/etc. https://www.waze.com/driverindex

The Netherlands also have the happiest children in the world with the best child travel independence. I'm guessing creating a world where active travel (walking and cycling) is built into your environment from the getgo sets you up for life to be active. Their diet is bloody awful. ;)

Waze seems to show few if any shortcuts anymore, until I manually start to take the route. Then the ETA drops by a couple minutes as it re-routes. Don't know if that's in response to complaints, but the shortcuts it continues to offer are usually through low-income areas. People who would be perhaps less likely to complain. /conspiracy theory over

When services reach critical mass, they don't need to offer the same value proposition. Only value Waze has left for me is police awareness, but even that has been mostly thwarted by changing police patterns. They rarely camp out in one place anymore and instead operate more like stings -- pull over and nab a speeder in 20-30 seconds.

Waze ensures that the paradox manifests itself. Braess' paradox relies on individuals acting rationally without respect for the system's behavior. That is exactly what Waze does.

I recall seeing articles a few years back about SF neighborhoods petitioning google to stop showing cut-through routes that increased the traffic on their side streets. I don't think it went anywhere but google does occasionally bend to this kind of thing (see the Hollywood sign controversy)

This only makes sense for those who think that removing congestion is intrinsically good. The social cost of removing congestion must be taken into account. Nobody likes to drive in congested roads, still many people choose to do so because of the outcome (hint: work). Reducing the congestion is useless if drivers are not free to enjoy the liberated roads.

PS: Yes, I agree with taway_1212

It's useful for everyone who breathes, hears, or walks.

>breathes

Many people do not realize how damaging to one's health it is to be near a highway:

https://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution-high...

Congestion is a tragedy of the commons caused by the people driving, who "could" have avoided it by not all driving 1 person per 4-person 2000lb car.

I'm sure they realize that, but most people can't seem change their lives to escape it by riding the bus or whatever.

Time is the matter key. Faster transportation mode will always win. Congestion will vanish when public transport will yield a shorter door-to-door time than driving through congestion.

It may not impact congestion but what else does it impact? For example if more people are staying home does that affect the local economy?

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