“Clark Williams-Derry of Seattle’s Sightline Institute once told me that the highway lobby often places more value on the time people waste in traffic than the drivers themselves do:

“If you actually make people pay out of pocket to get a faster trip, people aren’t willing to spend that much. We have two bridges across Lake Washington. One has to be replaced. They put a toll on it to help pay for the project, and immediately traffic plummeted. People are driving around to get to other side, driving on the other road, sitting through congestion, timing their trips differently in order to avoid tolls. People really, if they have to pay out of pocket for a quicker trip, they don’t place much value on it.

“So we’re expecting taxpayers to foot the bill for things the drivers themselves will not pay for.

“An even more stunning example of this comes from another Seattle road project, the Alaskan Way Viaduct, projected to cost about $4 billion. “The total amount they think they can raise from toll-payers for this project is $200 million,” Williams-Derry said. “So we’re expecting taxpayers to pay 20 times as much as drivers themselves are going to pay.”

“It’s what Yglesias calls the “push the costs onto other people” plan. The few who benefit from bad urban policy want the cost to be borne by the many who suffer from it.”

Consider, for example the “Waste Connex” plan for Sydney. According to the “Open Road” it has a $10 billion price tag. Assume that when built it carries 400 000 cars per day (guesswork based on number of lanes compared to Sydney Harbour Bridge). Then those drivers should pay a toll such that the annual net revenue equals $500M per year (based on a 5% interest rate). This works out at $3.47. This is required for ‘NET’ revenue to cover interest on the capital costs to eternity. Consider that there is maintenance, policing (apparently all tunnels over about 200 m have to have a fully manned operations room to oversee traffic conditions and institute emergency responses) (so we were told when we pressed for a tunnel for the Sexton Hill By-Pass) and this leaves nothing for depreciation, etc, and the minimum toll could easily be $7.00. This figure I have seen as a figure that the ‘toll’ should be capped at. But at that toll will the traffic still be 400 000 cars per day? Perhaps 200 000? Then the toll should be more like $14.00 per day.

It is worthwhile looking at the recently released Report by GHD for the Department of Infrastructure and Transport on over optimistic traffic forecasts- can’t access the URL while this cite is open but try googling “GHD | Revised Final report: Causes of over-optimistic patronage forecasts for selected recent toll road projects” which is the footer for the Report. Very Interesting!

Induced demand – Build a freeway/transit in the middle of nowhere connecting nowhere to nowhere and see how much demand is induced. My tip is none because these are not really trip generators in themselves. It is mostly the change in land use that dictates the inducement of demand. Building for induced demand is a statement about building unnecessarily ahead of the game and I think we are far removed from that position most of the time. Some dictatorships etc. on the other hand…

Latent demand – That is when you build a road/transit and it is quickly filled because there was a pre-existing demand for its use. IMO this is where we often are and where we should be positioned with most infrastructure we build (its where the bang for buck is).

Impending demand – What ties them both together the induced demand that’s coming (usually from land use change) that will pile on top of the existing latent demand.

The fact is that the roads/transit we often build are politically popular with constituents (otherwise we wouldn’t build anything because it would be a waste of money for votes). Currently new roads are seen as failures by detractors as they either don’t have enough traffic (a waste) or have heaps of traffic and have induced demand away from more sustainable alternates and encouraged even more traffic through car dependance.

I see a time coming soon where transit is also seen by detractors (especially inner city capacity upgrades) are seen the same way as they either don’t have enough use (a waste) or have heaps of use and have induced more people into an already overcrowded space. The argument being we should have spent a smaller sum of money to encourage the use of latent capacity to instead live local and work local thus being much more sustainable. The fact still remains though that “fixing” congestion on any mode buys votes and most people accept it improves a cities functionality over time.

By George, Warnie’s fired up

Induced traffic is an internationally recognised phenomenon.

Car are allowed on residential streets and other local streets and that is how they get to the freeways and tollways and thus they do increase traffic on local roads.

I take it that you are not denying that higher speeds (as do occur on free/tollways) use more fuel.

Freewanys do not create economic growth. Places with less freeways have more growth.

http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/growth.shtml

Freeways do not reduce pollution, they increase it. Freeways cause traffic that would not otherwise have been there and this increase traffic on stop start roads. Freeways increase speeds which increase fuel use.

http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/pollution.shtml

Alan, no, sorry, I don’t think much of VLC’s track record at all! “Not as bad as some” isn’t good enough.

readers should be rightly concerned about using forecasts from a company like VLC to determine whether such a major use of public funds is justifiable

They should be very concerned about whether the EW Link is justifiable. They should therefore insist proper forecasts are done to inform the decision. But shouldn’t they be glad a company with VLC’s track record is doing the transport modelling rather than someone else with a more, er…pliable…track record?

Freeways do not have environmental benefits. There mean higher speeds, which use more fuel. They mean traffic that would not have otherwise happened (induced demand) that again uses more fuel. They mean massive construction related emissions and destruction of habitat. Freeways should be demolished not built.