>As we add faster modes of transport people move farther out to maintain that time.

Exactly, which is why widening highways to alleviate congestion is a waste of time and money. More people will just move farther out, canceling out all the savings had by adding the extra lanes.

The time savings get cancelled out, but that's an incorrectly narrow view of things. Everyone who moved farther away concretely benefits in terms of bigger and/or cheaper accomodations. There is still a net benefit, just not in commute time.

> Everyone who moved farther away concretely benefits in terms of bigger and/or cheaper accomodations.

The rest of us suffer, in terms of increased environmental impact and ongoing infrastructure maintenance cost. We should not subsidize this behavior.

Nope, even the people who don't move benefit from reduced housing costs as people moving away frees up space.

Wrong. If you want more space, you need to build more densely. All this does is drive up housing prices farther away, encouraging people to move even farther away. The whole thing is completely unsustainable.

Let's do a thought experiment. Today, Highway A that links suburban region A to city B has 2 lanes and there are Y number of people that can make a certain commute in a certain amount of time.

We widen it to 4 lanes. We get 7-10 years of reduced congestion that steadily gets worse until we are at the same level of congestion.

Casting aside that temporary reprieve, which in itself adds value, the carrying capacity even at current levels of congestion has doubled, do we've now opened up another Y number of people with the option to make that commute.

So when it's all said and done, the number of people that can make that commute has doubled, even if the time it takes remains the same.

Still a win in terms of opening up options and mobility. More trucks can make deliveries. More people can commute to work.

The temporary reprieve's value is probably a minute or two each direction saved tops. The cost for that is also not paid for by the people using it.

>The temporary reprieve's value is probably a minute or two each direction saved tops.

Do you have a source for that? How could you possibly know without knowing current distance and average speed?

The problem with that logic is opportunity cost. What improvements to public transit could have been done with that thick wad of cash? Often (usually?) ones that would open up options and mobility to far more people.

Actually not. The highway allows undense spread out development. While you can build transit to those areas, to have useful transit (meaning stop every 5 minutes, not too many detours, and few transfers) you end up spending far more capital to build lightly used lines that are expensive to operator because so few people are on them (even if we assume private cars are illegal there wouldn't be many riders).

Note that not dense is the important part of the above. If you are willing to allow dense development (which most zones in the US prohibit) everything changes.

>If you are willing to allow dense development (which most zones in the US prohibit) everything changes.

Yep, this is the answer to it all: we need to build much more densely, and people need to get used to not having a big McMansion with a gigantic lawn.

It's a difference if you make a 30 min walk, pass by a bakery in the morning and the supermarket or a restaurant in the evening. You can't have that in the car, or train.

I don't understand - why can't I?

I have a 40 minute work to work that passes by a bakery. Sometimes I take the bus which passes right by that same bakery. Sometimes I drive which passes by the same bakery. I have stopped in that bakery while driving, and while walking, it make no difference. In fact the car is more flexible because a 5 minute detour lets me stop by a supermarket that is an extra 15 minutes while walking. (the bus only comes every 30 minutes so stopping in the middle to run errands isn't practical even though it detours to that supermarket)

Assuming you're in a city made for humans:

You pass by the bakery. You're not hungry… but it does look delicious. You go back, look through the windows again -- and decide you are hungry!

If you're in a car, you don't stroll around. You drive where you want to drive. Even discovering new things is hard since the people behind demand you don't slow down.

(this is loaded with personal experience and preference, I can perfectly understand this doesn't match yours.)

It's a surprisingly weird experience when you've been driving a particular commute for a long time, and then someone else does the driving one day.

As a passenger, suddenly you become aware of all these objects and sights that you simply couldn't spare the time or attention to look at when busy in the driver's seat.

One of those rare cases where driving is healthier than walking.

I agree a car is more flexible and it scales UP very well to allow for longer distances but it scales OUT very poorly. For a unit of sidewalk or road, you can support an order of magnitude more people walking to their work, or stopping by the bakery, vs driving to their work and filling up the parking lot. ie. It works great if you or a few people are the only ones doing it. But if everyone is doing it, you all end up miserable sitting in a traffic jam, or frustrated that you cannot find a parking spot at the bakery.

Part of it could be estimated to be stopping, parking (or drive thruing); accumulating several minutes.

Fun recent anecdote, a coworker passed me in his car while I was walking to work, because of the time for him to park, we arrived at the coffee machine at the same time.

I personally don't think 30 minutes would ever cause me some kind of issue. Currently my commute is 1 hour 10 minutes, through a combination of walking, bus and train (i live in europe) and I am rather unhappy with it, although it is something i've gotten used to.

Not sure why this is downvoted. People move farther as it becomes easier to commute.

Hence the suburban movement in the last 50 years or so.

Here in the bay area, real estate in the farther areas of east bay (e.g., Livermore) have been in high demand as there has been talks of Bart expansion to Livermore.

A solution is that is so much cheaper than building wider roads is just to allow easier upzoning and higher density buildings. San Francisco's housing problems are all self-imposed.