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Your footnote says that this is just a name, but I would point out that car-dependent suburbs are relatively new, mostly post WW2. The neighborhoods that urbanists like tend to be the older ones, and in fact often describe this as a "traditional" development style.
This is somewhat true, but far from completely. Highways especially are often the domain of the state or federal government, so you have situations like the state of Texas trying to expand I-35 through downtown Austin that the city generally opposes. Or small groups of individuals who join together based on their self-interest rather than political agreement to oppose changes with nitpicky legal maneuvering. In general, lawsuits filed by individuals or small groups are a common tool to prevent development, and the laws these suits are based on can come from any level of government.
Mind-boggling. It’s as if they want Austin to suck as much as possible. Like the suck is part of the charm.
It sometimes legitimately feels like the state does things for no other reason than to frustrate the city and its residents. In this case I think the relevant state officials really do believe that expanding the highway will reduce congestion in spite of overwhelming empirical evidence, but wouldn't be surprised if they felt the ability to throw their weight around and ignore the city's point of view was a bonus.
Wait, no. That’s the opposite of the point I was making. I-35 through downtown Austin is 3 lanes each direction. It’s awful. That’s the same width as I-35 through rural areas between San Antonio and Waco.
You seem to have fallen for the “induced demand” meme. No, the demand is already there. People want to live in the suburbs and work downtown. If throughput were increased, more people would be able to do that. The welfare of the area would be increased. People wouldn’t have to pay massive rent for shitty apartments near their work. Not to mention the fact that I-35 is, you know, an Interstate. People hate driving through Austin. Other Texas cities with functional freeway systems are objectively easier to get around.
It's not a meme; it's basic economics which is also backed up by fairly overwhelming empirical evidence.
Given Austin's zoning map, a correct statement would be "Austinites are largely prohibited from living anywhere except a suburb or right in the middle of downtown." Also, people may "want"* to live in the suburbs and drive into downtown, but that's not possible. Doubling freeway capacity would not change that, because it is literally impossible to fit the whole population into cars. They simply take up too much space.
*I put "want" in scare quotes because rarely do such people want to pay all of the costs associated with doing so.
No, it would be a net decrease, because the cost of doing so would be very high, and those resources could be more efficiently used elsewhere. It would suck for anyone who currently lives in the area and has to deal with additional car traffic, construction, and possibly have their property sized to make room. It would separate downtown from East Austin even more, etc.
There's no reason to have the only interstate go straight through downtown. Lots of cities have interstates that go around the core. San Antonio has 410. Houston has 610 and I think others I don't recall the number of. DFW has 635, 20, and again I think others. Elsewhere, 95 goes totally around Boston, while 90 and 93 go into the city. Austin only has 45, which isn't an interstate and is a toll road, so all the trucks and other thru traffic go through the city even though it's slower.
Let's say we add the new lanes, and congestion stays the same, and travel times stay the same. Is this a failure?
Let's say you have a single supermarket in a town. It's too crowded, the lines are always long. A second supermarket opens in a town. There's enough demand that, now, both supermarkets are too crowded, and the lines are too long. Is this bad? No, it's strictly an improvement - more people are buying food now! And the supermarket makes more money!
The same is true of 'induced demand' - the goal of 'reduce congestion' wasn't accomplished, but a separate goal of 'more people getting to where they want to' was. The extra people who drive on the new highway are benefitting greatly from the change - they can now get to places they couldn't before!
That's ... not a net decrease. That's a 'suboptimal policy'. It's only a net decrease if those resources would be used more efficiently elsewhere absent the highway. Which, I think you would agree when looking at the rest of the city budget, they're not likely to be any time soon.
A net decrease would require comparing that 'dealing with additional traffic' to the new jobs or new activities the people the additional traffic brings, or the economic benefits from the businesses employing / serving the additional traffic. And ... I can't see how that comes out net negative. Having your property sized does suck, yeah, and I'm not sure how to factor that cost in - but that's basically a universal cost of development, so it doesn't obviously bring the total negative.
If your goal is to reduce congestion, which is typically a major stated goal of these projects, then yes, it's clearly a failure.
I don't think this statement means anything, but also there is no "market" here. The state government just wants to build more highway, regardless of costs or benefits.
I don't know why every time I end up in a discussion about roads on here, all of the car enthusiasts use the same analogy as if I don't understand that more people driving means that more people are going places. That's not the question. The question is how this particular use of space, money, and time compares to alternatives. It's like offering starving people 1,000-dollar truffle mushrooms as food, and then when someone points out that 98% of them are still starving because you could only afford to feed 2%, you pat yourself on the back because, well, you fed some people, right?
Plus, you can't just completely ignore everyone except for the group who benefits. What about the businesses and homes that would be subsumed by the wider freeway? Are they better off? What about people who live in East Austin and would like to be able to get into downtown without driving? What about people who can't or don't want to drive?
Okay, lets bring some numbers into it. I-35 through downtown has an average annual daily traffic count (AADT) of 150,000-200,000. The widest section of the Katy Freeway in Houston has an AADT of about 300,000. It seems plausible that if we doubled the width of I-35 we could get an AADT of 250,000-300,000 before experiencing the current level of congestion. That's 50,000 extra commuters (since AADT measures traffic both ways). To put that in perspective, 50,000 is 4% of the entire population of Travis County. Suppose an entire city block has to be demolished the whole length of the freeway through the county, does that directly impact 50,000 people? Do 4% of the county's citizens live or work directly adjacent to the East side of I-35? It's not like these people are thrown into the fires of Mordor either. The massively increased throughput will open up development opportunities further away from the city center, increasing the supply of housing and driving down rents.
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By market I meant "the supermarket", not a market in the economy sense, sorry
Well, that's the main stated goal because 'people who do not shop or live or work here, but will after we do ' isn't a particularly valuable constituency for local politics, whereas 'people who live here and want driving to be easier is'. But ... imagine we expand the highways, but we track everyone who uses the highway & their frequency of use in the preceding months, and ban anyone from using the highway more frequently than they did in the past. This would ensure congestion is relieved. But seems dumb, precisely because 'existing people driving a bit faster' seems worse than 'more people using the highway'?
If all the transit-urbanism claims are true and that money should go into efficiently constructed subways instead, and if doing so would cause road use to be demanded so much less that current congestion dries up ... strong assumptions, but then yes, the current highway expansion would be pointless. But given that alternative isn't happening, and both lack of political will and existing dysfunction in construction in the US make it unlikely to happen soon. Whereas the highway expansion is happening. So outside of that, what better alternatives are there for that money, do you think?
It makes the question of 'should we stop handing out the truffle mushrooms'? And - if you're an individual who has that power, yes, you should simultaneously stop buying truffles and start buying rice. But given I don't have that power, I don't see how advocating against building the highway helps much - because if the highway stops, the existing (stronger) forces preventing better (i am assuming they are better for this discussion, haven't thought enough to be sure) forms of transit won't suddenly dissipate, we'll be arguably worse off, without expanded highways or better transit
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The market in this case is utility enjoyed by people living where they prefer.
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