NYMTC holds Technical Exchange
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) held a "Technical Exchange" lunch on Feb. 1 -- topic: "Highway Capacity: Friend or Foe?" Debate centered on the proposition that adding highway capacity induces drivers to take more or longer car trips. NYMTC director Ray Ruggieri argued that because so many influences external to the transportation system factor into individual travel decisions, driving induced by highway expansions in not a detectable phenomenon. He cited a recent British government study (see Mobilizing the Region 19) that suggested the strong likelihood of induced demand under certain conditions, but which stated: "it is inherently difficult to prove the existence of the phenomena of induced and suppressed traffic (in relation to roadway capacity)." Transportation engineer and activist George Haikalis argued the point from a different perspective. He gave numerous examples where traffic capacity was reduced dramatically (when part of the West Side Highway collapsed in 1973 and traffic "disappeared," and the closing of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1988, which produced similar results. Evidence strongly suggests that by eliminating capacity, people switch modes or don't travel. Europeans have noticed this effect so often that they've named it: "traffic evaporation."* If so, Haikalis argued, then the reverse -- adding road capacity encourages auto use -- should be true as well. This is of particular importance in our metropolitan region, where so many people own cars but do not use them for everyday travel, and where transportation agencies plan to invest billions of public dollars in questionable highway expansions. All attending agreed that the region's transportation agencies are preparing to invest in new highway capacity without really knowing whether it will simply make traffic and air pollution worse than they already are.
