Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
Sorry, you're correct, not sure how I messed the numbers up there. Regardless, I'll trust the city of Calgary's projections over your skepticism of them. They could very well be wrong, but they are more likely to be correct than whatever you think the right number should be.
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Yes and no, because I'm not venturing a number, precisely because I think it's just impossible to forecast.
I don't mind long-term projections, as long as everyone is aware they're likely to be bullshit. An example of a situation where a projection would be more harmful than just not making any projections at all would be if Calgary starts investing resources right now into building special infrastructure for water supply that won't be needed until the city passes 3 million people, the logic being "we're doing this now because we don't want to risk not being ready on time", and then more likely than not all of that becomes a huge and expensive and environmentally-unfriendly white elephant.
I have been fighting FLDOT for a couple years now as they want to eminent domain acquire one of my favorite properties that's super well located on a State Route because they want to enlarge it, adding more lanes in each direction. I pointed out that IMO that boulevard was already wide enough based on all my firsthand experience, and that they should leave it alone, and the engineer replied something along the lines of "sure, it's okay now, but we're planning for 2050 and beyond, and by that point with the robust population growth we've been seeing in the area all those new lanes will be needed according to our projections".
In 10-15 years we may all be riding in self-driving pods... riding efficiently bumper to bumper at relatively high speed while intersections have become optimized compared to the current situation (nonsynchronized traffic lights). Frankly it's very possible that those extra lanes will never become needed.
Pisses me off...
And it's all because of a stupid long-term growth projection.