Brent Toderian
Brian Claus@BrentToderian hey Brent, are there any studies that look at correlations between higher thruput on roadways and economic productivity? I get the whole induced demand thing but surely some of that traffic is creating wealth which is presumably why cities keep on this direction. Is there any material out there that discusses this?
Jack of all trades@brianinbc @BrentToderian Like most things in #economics showing causality is very hard. Correlation by itself wouldn't tell us much.
Economic value is a poor measure of progress IMO. "How can we transport people and products effectively while not destroying the environment and our health" is IMO a much better question than "How can we make changes without negatively affecting the GDP".
@brianinbc @BrentToderian The problem with cars is that they have a lot of externalities that are not included in economic calculations. Cars produce profits for car manufacturers and oil companies, but they also produce air pollution incurring health costs to the general population. In fact, the latter are not treated as costs at all, but instead inflate GDP further via the health sector.
@brianinbc @BrentToderian Many cities around the world are banning polluting car traffic. Are the people living there worse or better off?
Is Tokyo with its robust train lines an economic dead zone?
Do people in the US enjoy their long commutes to work or to even buy groceries?
@jackofalltrades @BrentToderian Jack, I think narrative of wider roads--more traffic--more wealth or wider roads--less congestion are pretty easy for politicians to sell. So yes it is too simplistic and possibly/probably wrong but simple narratives have a lot of power. So to be convincing I think it is worthwhile exploring what are the simple narratives that you can give to the politicians that change things to your preferred modes of transportation.
@jackofalltrades @BrentToderian Keeping in mind that externalities like health and environment are often heavily discounted by people over things like money and time.
@brianinbc @BrentToderian This is perfect:
"externalities like health and environment are often heavily discounted by people over things like money and time."
If that's the case then I submit myself to the benevolent power of #democracy and accept our inevitable #climateChange - induced collapse.
@brianinbc @BrentToderian Jokes aside, public transport is more space/money/time efficient than congested car traffic.
Compare public transport ticket price with the cost of owning and maintaining a car.
Compare how many lanes and cars are needed to achieve the same passenger throughput as a single metro car.
Compare how much time trips take by car vs by public transport in cities like Tokyo or Amsterdam.
@jackofalltrades @BrentToderian I'm all in on increasing the efficiency and availability of public transport. However, it is going to remain undesirable to large segments of the cars as status symbols bunch. Many of these folks work in jobs that don't require that much in office time, accounting, lawyering, programming. I'd be curious to see a break down of income by necessity of in person work. I bet many of these jobs could be incentivised to be remote via tax breaks.
@jackofalltrades @BrentToderian there's also a perception of density sufficiency for mass transport that takes the urgency out of these discussions in many places in Canada. I wonder how scalable a public ride share like service could be to transition more rural areas into public transport.