Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Eade
How to deal with traffic seems to be somewhat of a puzzle that this City can’t seem to figure out. Cars don’t just disappear when a road is narrowed; they move to routes that have less obstacles. The corollary, of course, is that if the City widens a road, it soon becomes full of cars. But those cars don’t just materialize out of nothing any more than cars just disappear when a road is blocked. They are drivers choosing the path of least resistance.
Traffic will always be with us in the city. It is an essential component of the connectedness of a city. It needs to be properly dealt with. This City doesn’t.
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Your logic is sound, but incomplete: it's not drivers who choose the path of least resistance - it's PEOPLE.
This is an important distinction, because when you think of it only as drivers, then there are only two choices: drive on road A or drive on road B.
When you consider that people exist outside of their cars, then there is a whole range of possibilities: drive on road A, take the bus on road B, take your bike on path C, walk on street D and even things like changing your destination or travel times or stay home. This is a much more accurate assessment of the real-world workings of mobility as opposed to the very theoretical (and rarely-materialized) traffic-management.
People will take not only the
path of least resistance, but also the
mode of least resistance. So when you open a new road, bus ridership is likely to go down (at least in the short-medium term) and, conversely, when you close a road, people will find other ways to get around. This isn't some kumbaya principle - it's a well-documented and oft-observed fundamental law of traffic. The "common-sens-o-logical" argument of absolute traffic volume, on the other hand, has never been observed outside of our collective imagination of gridlock apocalypse.
And in that sense, dealing with traffic is not an objective or scientific exercise - it's a public question as to how we want our city to look and work; by action or inaction, we decide which mode of transportation will be the path of least resistance. Beyond the minimum imperatives of emergency vehicle access or the most basic public transit, it is all up to us - there is no imperative one way or another.
So let's not sleepwalk into something we might not want. If we want an auto-focused city, then let's have that discussion and make that choice. But to just claim that prioritizing the car in every neighbourhood and for every trip is an inevitable fact of life is false and is proving less-than-ideal of everyone - drivers included.