Re:LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
by tylerhou on Thursday May 27, 2021 @02:01PM
(#27306102)
You're right that basic econ doesn't always hold, but in practice, it often does. In this case we actually have data on how road expansion affects transport times, which show that transport times slightly drop (as econ 101 predicts).
https://www.thecgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Can-We-Bui... (Pages 8-10)
In reality people are stubborn. We chase sunk costs and we repeat inefficient behavior because it is habit. People therefore won't necessarily choose to drive based on an evaluation of that individual trip. They will base it on things like whether they own a car, whether they have an unlimited pass for their local mass transit system, and simply what they did the last time they made the same trip. Therefore traffic can actually exceed where it was before as new and improved roads can lead to people buying more cars and people being less reliant on public transit.