Travel times on Highway 401's bottleneck in Toronto were around 25 minutes in 2016. They worsened to as much as 32 minutes last year and could hit an hour by 2051.
It’s as if by making it easier for people to drive instead of having viable alternatives, people would chose to drive more, causing even more cars to fill up the 401.
Induced demand is a terrifying demon that will make driving more miserable by taking away resources from solutions that actually work: trains and other alternative measures. A single train can move as many people as the entire 134km of new roads, and you can put more than one train on a single new rail track. You can run dozens of such trains a day, and instead of being a money sink hole, it can even operate at a profit that goes directly towards maintaining the remaining roads as long as it’s government owned rather than have private middlemen pocket the surplus cash.
Toronto and many other major cities already have wonderful and expansive rail infrastrucutre. We just need to upgrade the rail systems in between cities so that passenger and freight doesn’t have to compete for the same lines causing massive delays every single day.
It’s as if by making it easier for people to drive instead of having viable alternatives, people would chose to drive more, causing even more cars to fill up the 401.
Induced demand is a terrifying demon that will make driving more miserable by taking away resources from solutions that actually work: trains and other alternative measures. A single train can move as many people as the entire 134km of new roads, and you can put more than one train on a single new rail track. You can run dozens of such trains a day, and instead of being a money sink hole, it can even operate at a profit that goes directly towards maintaining the remaining roads as long as it’s government owned rather than have private middlemen pocket the surplus cash.
Toronto and many other major cities already have wonderful and expansive rail infrastrucutre. We just need to upgrade the rail systems in between cities so that passenger and freight doesn’t have to compete for the same lines causing massive delays every single day.