Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes people drive more (2015)

Re:Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes peo... by honkycat on Friday December 28, 2018 @04:16PM (#18779480)

Except for the fact that building more roads != more commerce. In fact, roads often DECIMATE the communities they are built through. Ask the rural United States how building a bunch of highways through their towns to the local Walmart has gone for them. Roads for cars are much less efficient for commerce than community oriented walkable streets.[0]

Also, maintaining roads is expensive. Once you build a new road it is politically unpopular to get rid of it. Who really benefits from the new road being built? The businesses that can afford to build a long the new highway and have a massive amount of parking around it. IE: Taco Bell, WalMart, etc. The people road construction businesses the government shovels money to. [1]

We have a CRUMBLING infrastructure in the US, and people are constantly complaining about potholes in major metropolitan areas. And the solution is build more roads? We cannot even maintain the ones we have!

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/16/why-walkable-s... [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

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Re:Fundamental rule of traffic: building new roads makes peo... by kortilla on Saturday December 29, 2018 @06:35AM (#18783175)

>Ask the rural United States how building a bunch of highways through their towns to the local Walmart has gone for them.

Might be hard to get an answer given that most places didn’t build highways to Walmarts.

Either way, consumers tend to shop at their local Walmart regardless of the road to it. Consumers seem to consistently pick Walmart over overpriced local businesses nearly everywhere except for wealthy, dense cities where people can afford to avoid the unpleasantness of shopping the giant things with lower class people.

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