Calgary Roads Discussion Thread

[timun]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I occasionally shop at the Midtown Co-op grocery store, which is why I'm ever in that lane at all.

Ah, usually if I hit up the Co-op it's on the way home, in which case I'm going up 11th or 8th Street and don't pass by that side of the Staples at all.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Shazam

So no then.

Which then begs the question: What does and doesn't "induce demand", if there is such a thing.

So talking about induced demand and transportation the basics are that each individual will have some sort of threshold for commute time, property cost, and space required. As a city grows this reaches equilibrium for a particular city and road density slowly increases and commutes get longer, then density increases and property values rise.

When you do a major road or transit project all of a sudden a certain area becomes more palatable because it now wins the cost/commute/space equation. So in that direction there is more demand for new construction and sub-divisions and density. So any gains made by improving roads are filled in by growth and in a little while your commute times stabilize back to where they were before.

The benefits of the new road are used by adding more cars because the cost of that route was lower.

So in general anything that reduces commute time or cost will induce demand until the infrastructure is filled back to where it is in balance with the rest of the city. Essentially more roads don’t make traffic better they just allow your city to grow.

So bike lanes end up working a little differently but in some ways the same. If the reason people don’t bike is it takes too long then adding biking infrastructure doesn’t really help so you don’t get the same affect. Because better biking infrastructure doesn’t really improve speed.

However if Safety is the reason people aren’t biking then by providing safer infrastructure you reduce the perceived cost of biking work and therefore increase demand for it. Not quite the same but in some scenarios bike lanes will increase the number of bikers.

[Acey]

Traffic is now on the 19 St NE bridge over Airport Trail but the detour signage is awful and people are all over the place so be super careful if you're up here in this area.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Acey

Traffic is now on the 19 St NE bridge over Airport Trail but the detour signage is awful and people are all over the place so be super careful if you're up here in this area.

Thanks! Drove through there yesterday, and it wasn’t open yet, but it looked like th city was getting ready.

Please note, 19th Street is not full access, you can’t get from Westbound Airport Trail onto 19th street - you need to exit Airport Trail onto Barlow.

Also, in the permanent design, you can’t access EB Airport trail from SB 19th, though you may be able to do that in this temporary opening.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by GGG

So talking about induced demand and transportation the basics are that each individual will have some sort of threshold for commute time, property cost, and space required. As a city grows this reaches equilibrium for a particular city and road density slowly increases and commutes get longer, then density increases and property values rise.

When you do a major road or transit project all of a sudden a certain area becomes more palatable because it now wins the cost/commute/space equation. So in that direction there is more demand for new construction and sub-divisions and density. So any gains made by improving roads are filled in by growth and in a little while your commute times stabilize back to where they were before.

The benefits of the new road are used by adding more cars because the cost of that route was lower.

So in general anything that reduces commute time or cost will induce demand until the infrastructure is filled back to where it is in balance with the rest of the city. Essentially more roads don’t make traffic better they just allow your city to grow.

So bike lanes end up working a little differently but in some ways the same. If the reason people don’t bike is it takes too long then adding biking infrastructure doesn’t really help so you don’t get the same affect. Because better biking infrastructure doesn’t really improve speed.

However if Safety is the reason people aren’t biking then by providing safer infrastructure you reduce the perceived cost of biking work and therefore increase demand for it. Not quite the same but in some scenarios bike lanes will increase the number of bikers.

Ah, government thinking at its worst. Clumsy naïve pseudo-economic analysis.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Shazam

Ah, government thinking at its worst. Clumsy naïve pseudo-economic analysis.

Do you know what induced demand is and have an opinion on it then?

If so a short message board post on induced demand isn’t going to help you further understand it or change your opinion on it.

In that case your question was disingenuous and perhaps you should just post the claim you are intending to make.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by GGG

Do you know what induced demand is and have an opinion on it then?

If so a short message board post on induced demand isn’t going to help you further understand it or change your opinion on it.

In that case your question was disingenuous and perhaps you should just post the claim you are intending to make.

Clearly Shazam knows something that all the academics, economists, and urban studies professionals don't that disproves induced demand and that's why he's taken to CalgaryPuck to inform the masses.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by GGG

Do you know what induced demand is and have an opinion on it then?

If so a short message board post on induced demand isn’t going to help you further understand it or change your opinion on it.

In that case your question was disingenuous and perhaps you should just post the claim you are intending to make.

Yes, I know what the induced demand hypothesis is. It's economic quackery at its finest. Do you also believe in the effectiveness of the keto diet, organic food and that fluoride is poison?

Let's add Modern Monetary Theory to that pile of rubble.

I'm a heavy user of the bike paths, just so you know. I could always use more. I do know that they're not all that popular.

[Torture]

I look forward to your detailed review showing why these papers are economic quackery. Thanks in advance.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=1...aer.101.6.2616
https://assets.publishing.service.go...nce-review.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...65856411001728
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00166218
https://link.springer.com/article/10...-9378-4#page-1

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Shazam

Yes, I know what the induced demand hypothesis is. It's economic quackery at its finest. Do you also believe in the effectiveness of the keto diet, organic food and that fluoride is poison?

Let's add Modern Monetary Theory to that pile of rubble.

I'm a heavy user of the bike paths, just so you know. I could always use more. I do know that they're not all that popular.

What's so hard to accept about Induced Demand being a real factor in things?

When downtown was bustling, people would always be trying to find shortcuts and other methods to get in and out. Some who didn't want to deal with the commute time and gridlock would take transit instead.

Now, add a downtown penetrator, parkades, & other car infrastructure and you induce demand for people who now decide that driving to downtown is easy and they quickly swamp the freeway as more people find out about it. You have induced a higher demand for driving by giving people a more compelling reason to drive.

The opposite happens with reduced demand, where if you remove a major artery, the cost and difficulty of transport by personal car increases, and therefore you reduce the demand for car traffic as people will choose alternative means like transit or cycling. In fact, with the closures of Memorial, Centre Street Bridge, and the 5th avenue flyover in the past year from covid, filming, construction, I have chosen to cycle a lot more because of those.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by GGG

The benefits of the new road are used by adding more cars because the cost of that route was lower.

So in general anything that reduces commute time or cost will induce demand until the infrastructure is filled back to where it is in balance with the rest of the city. Essentially more roads don’t make traffic better they just allow your city to grow.

The problem is when these benefits are used by some groups to argue against building or expanding roads.

[EverfresH15]

It’s really annoying that there is an 80 zone on Stoney heading south with speed fines being doubled and the only construction is on the bridge. Which is 8 km away.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by EverfresH15

It’s really annoying that there is an 80 zone on Stoney heading south with speed fines being doubled and the only construction is on the bridge. Which is 8 km away.

That is super annoying. The 80 zone, or at least the portion from just north of Crowchild to Tuscany Blvd is still under construction which is possibly why, but there has not been any active construction on Stoney itself in this area since last year.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by GGG

So talking about induced demand and transportation the basics are that each individual will have some sort of threshold for commute time, property cost, and space required. As a city grows this reaches equilibrium for a particular city and road density slowly increases and commutes get longer, then density increases and property values rise.

When you do a major road or transit project all of a sudden a certain area becomes more palatable because it now wins the cost/commute/space equation. So in that direction there is more demand for new construction and sub-divisions and density. So any gains made by improving roads are filled in by growth and in a little while your commute times stabilize back to where they were before.

The benefits of the new road are used by adding more cars because the cost of that route was lower.

So in general anything that reduces commute time or cost will induce demand until the infrastructure is filled back to where it is in balance with the rest of the city. Essentially more roads don’t make traffic better they just allow your city to grow.

So bike lanes end up working a little differently but in some ways the same. If the reason people don’t bike is it takes too long then adding biking infrastructure doesn’t really help so you don’t get the same affect. Because better biking infrastructure doesn’t really improve speed.

However if Safety is the reason people aren’t biking then by providing safer infrastructure you reduce the perceived cost of biking work and therefore increase demand for it. Not quite the same but in some scenarios bike lanes will increase the number of bikers.

Bike lanes also improve the relative speed of bikes by slowing down traffic on roads where lanes are converted from motor vehicles.

[Fuzz]

It's like on JLB, heading Eastbound. There is a construction zone at 50km/h. It clearly ends at the top of the hill, but there is no end construction sign, and the next 70km/h sign is a good km away. Everyone starts speeding up gradually after, unsure if they are still in a construction zone, because the wire fences they put in the middle aren't tensioned so maybe that's it? It's confusing.


They also put the westbound "left lane ends" sign just over the crest of the hill, so you don't see it until it's way to late to merge safely. I have no idea how the site foreman don't pick up these simple safety issues and fix them.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Bike lanes also improve the relative speed of bikes by slowing down traffic on roads where lanes are converted from motor vehicles.

Except for the people in this thread which I imagine are all those people I try to keep up with but they are doing 30 on the pathway https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=169784

To be fair, bike lanes on the road kind of prohibit this because you always hit a red light like it's ordained by the universe.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Except for the people in this thread which I imagine are all those people I try to keep up with but they are doing 30 on the pathway https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=169784

To be fair, bike lanes on the road kind of prohibit this because you always hit a red light like it's ordained by the universe.

I meant that it improves the relative speed because it slows down the pace of cars by taking a lane away.

[timun]

Originally Posted by accord1999

The problem is when these benefits are used by some groups to argue against building or expanding roads.

Personally, I think the bigger issue is that a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that a new or expanded road is a magic bullet that solves traffic problems. It might, in the short term, but invariably you still end up where you started.

For instance a lot of people in my ward (11) were vociferously opposed to the 14th Street SW BRT, and Jeromy Farkas won his seat on council in 2017 largely on the back of being a vocal opponent of that project (and frankly Dan McLean in Ward 13 won last night over Diane Colley-Urquhart in part because he opposed it). Many of the opponents thought it was a giant waste of money because it would see little use, especially after the ring road was complete. These people were/are banking on the ring road alleviating traffic on 14th Street, which is nonsense.

There's NO reason for that to be the case. Other than a relatively small proportion of people living in Woodbine/Cedarbrae/Oakridge/etc who were taking 14th to Glenmore to Hwy 8 or Hwy 1, most traffic on 14th Street goes to Glenmore and then Crowchild. The ring road does nothing to help that. The ring road may be an appealing alternative to people living on the western fringes of the SW communities, but otherwise for most it's taking them miles out of their way.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by timun

Personally, I think the bigger issue is that a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that a new or expanded road is a magic bullet that solves traffic problems. It might, in the short term, but invariably you still end up where you started.

For instance a lot of people in my ward (11) were vociferously opposed to the 14th Street SW BRT, and Jeromy Farkas won his seat on council in 2017 largely on the back of being a vocal opponent of that project (and frankly Dan McLean in Ward 13 won last night over Diane Colley-Urquhart in part because he opposed it). Many of the opponents thought it was a giant waste of money because it would see little use, especially after the ring road was complete. These people were/are banking on the ring road alleviating traffic on 14th Street, which is nonsense.

There's NO reason for that to be the case. Other than a relatively small proportion of people living in Woodbine/Cedarbrae/Oakridge/etc who were taking 14th to Glenmore to Hwy 8 or Hwy 1, most traffic on 14th Street goes to Glenmore and then Crowchild. The ring road does nothing to help that. The ring road may be an appealing alternative to people living on the western fringes of the SW communities, but otherwise for most it's taking them miles out of their way.

I thought the opposition was more that they didn't want the stations in their neighborhoods because of the potential to attract a certain element.

[timun]

There's that too. Public transit = poor people = crime was definitely at play in the minds of some.