Induced Demand Debunked
I’ve wanted to write for a while about “induced demand”, the specious argument that expanded roads just fill up with new traffic so why should we bother?
Two articles below debunk the induced demand argument in their own ways, but here’s my own TL;DR summary: Which type of infrastructure should government invest in: transit almost nobody will use, or lanes everybody will use? Induced demand is a false argument. Nobody says “don’t build a new airport terminal or runway – it will just fill up with new flights” or “don’t build a new port terminal – it will just fill up with ships” (🙄 eye roll)
The first is from the well-known Matthew Yglesias: What does “induced demand” really amount to? – We should build infrastructure that people use. Key excerpts:
“The New York Times recently did a big feature grounded in induced demand theory headlined “Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?” which skirted around the kind of obvious answer that we do it because it lets more people drive to more places.
