this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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To take people out of cars and onto transit, you must make those options more attractive, efficient, safe, fast than cars. That means taking space from cars to give to protected bike lanes, to separated bus lanes, to pedestrian traffic etc. When you have done that, you remove the thing that induces car demand in the first place.
Yes but the next step is for people formerly in cars to move to these alternate modes of transportation which have higher density, thus if you're really successful at it, at least initially, freeing up more space than you took. Under that possibility, we end up with more empty space on the now narrower street. Which induces demand.
Again, I'm saying that under these assumptions, the author's argument is valid. I'm not saying it's valid in all circumstances or that's it's actually useful, outside of what he used it for. He made it to show that even if we're very good at improving the quality of life of commuters we shouldn't expect to have F150s driving at 50kph through downtown. It's not an argument I'd use in any other setting as it can be misused very easily by people that don't want improved transit or bike infra.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Is the argument that "if you don't take space from cars then they will just come back"? If that's the point, sure.
However, it is true that in a city that is no longer car centric, the people who actually need to drive (emergency vehicles, some categories of disabled people, etc) do have an easier time driving.