Induced Demand Debunked

Am I the only one who thinks the title is a clickbait?

The article doesn't even try to debunk the idea. All it does is say "induced demand exists, but it's somehow a good thing"

> Piece first appeared at Houston Strategies.

> [author] is also an editor of the Houston Strategies blog.

It all makes sense.

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Most large cities, even in the US, succeed because of good planning, specifically that doesn't require treating cars as the dominant lifeform.

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I sympathize with comments on the [original] blog post, where, given that Huston already exists, and you've built a career there, and the city and community: speak, serve, reward; marginal car use (except for everyone else's car use), I understand how an incremental billion dollar freeway seems like an incremental improvement over something that doesn't let you do what a car could let you do.

It's a kind of Stockholm syndrome, "Huston syndrome" might be more appropriate,

[original]: https://houstonstrategies.blogspot.com/2023/06/induced-deman...

Maybe I have misunderstood the argument this entire time (or maybe we’re all misunderstanding one another’s arguments for a variety of reasons), but I always interpreted the “induced demand” argument as asserting that adding additional capacity for cars will not reduce or relieve problems with traffic congestion. Note that is a distinct argument from the article’s framing of it, which suggests that “induced demand” is asserting that building additional capacity is somehow counterproductive because it will just fill up with more traffic. Both things are true, but note that the former argument implies a broader goal of reducing the problems inherent with traffic congestion. The article also seems to ignore that the people and organizations who put forth induced demand arguments generally come equipped with alternative solutions, not just blind opposition to additional car-focused capacity and a pair of magic words.

Vouching for this because "induced demand" is frequently used a discussion-ender with regards to transportation, but deserves more consideration.

We should definitely be vigilant against building infrastructure people will not use, but opinions around roads are treated very differently than houses, rail lines, runways, etc. No one is saying: "If we build more houses, people would just fill them up."

I am also against large road building projects, but for an entirely different reason. There's a very good chance that within 10 years, self driving cars could 5x the throughput capacity of existing roads.

This was written for Houston Strategies, I’m thinking it might not be some unbiased flawless review of the data. Houston is an oil town with crazy sprawl, they have a vested interest in more cars and car dependency.

The article doesn’t seem to debunk induced demand at all, but rather explains why it occurs and just says that’s ok. It also seems to think that a transit line would somehow induce demand for car trips, as if people would just appear out of nowhere to both take transit and reduce traffic and then take more car trips as well

This is utter malarkey. Also funny that this is one of the bullet points on their About page:

> The use of bus transport, including rapid bus lanes, as well as new technologies, including firms like Uber and driverless cars, need to be considered as potential answers to the issue of urban mobility

Emphasis mine. Anytime I see someone who thinks Uber is a good, urbanist solution, I know not to take them seriously.

This article is dumb and no one should take it seriously. The key is space efficiency: using a car takes the most physical space, versus walking or biking. Investing in car infrastructure gives the least benefit.

Paris and Amsterdam prove there’s significant benefits to leaning into transit and biking vs cars.

This is a hilariously bad take, honestly. It essentially ignores every single argument/observation made regarding induced demand and just calls it a day.

What kind of a joke organization even made it? 'Urban Reform Institute' - what a blatant attempt at trying to recycle actual urban advocacy into good old NIMBY arguments again.

Boo.