Calgary Roads

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by sim

Not that you don't have a point here, but trying to disprove a point in general using anecdotal information (something, I must point out, you do habitiually) is not sufficient either.

Actually, with the number of absolutes stated in a forum such as this, disproof by counter-example is more than sufficient in most cases. But I'm not so much trying to "disprove" anything here, rather make people actually think about what they're saying. Jumping to the conclusion of "induced demand!" every time road usage goes up is silly. It's on par with "it's colder today, therefore global warming is fake!".

Maybe 13,000 cars are induced. Maybe 3,000. Maybe zero. We can't come to a reasonable conclusion based on one data point, however we can show that not every single one of them is induced.

Very true. They can provide valuable insight into overlooked or unforeseen aspects of a plan or project. Yet, I don't think that should necessarily mean that the public's opinion necessarily needs to be acted on. The public, strangely enough, tends to act on individual interests and not that of society as a whole. Planning might be perceived as "social-engineering" or whatever happens to be the word of the day, until that individual is the one being negatively effected. (I guess in that regard, planners a little bit like the police.) Secondly, even if they aren't always acting on individual interest, it doesn't mean they fully understand the issue from a broad perspective. I don't want to explicitly say I'm right in the above case, but try, for example telling the people of Calgary that the way to reduce traffic issues in the long term is by not increasing capacity...

Absolutely. Witness the stupidity of the Scenic Acres access to the Crowfoot LRT station. To put it bluntly, the (vocal part of the) public was WRONG.

However, planners aren't gods. They're human and subject to the same biases and foils as the rest of us. In many cases in the past, I've seen planning done in ways that make me wonder if people are taking some powerful drugs. Or less facetiously, if realities are being overridden by ideology or political motivations. It's like in the business world when a random MBA is tasked to manage something - a company, a department, a team, whatever. Sometimes it works. And often it bombs miserably, because said MBA has pretty much zero clue about the people and processes s/he's managing. I'm not talking about social engineering or some other buzzword - I just think that a lot of the time, an incomplete understanding and/or improper motivations are to blame.

Remember, "planners" (as a profession/group) are the ones who got us into this mess with our roads in the first place. I highly doubt that every single one of them in the past was wrong about everything, and every single one of them today is right. Planners were the ones who wanted to blast a massive freeway right through the core of Calgary not 50 years ago.