Article: Travel Demand Modeling and its drawbacks

[kurumi]

A writer for Vice takes a critical look at Travel Demand Modeling as a basis for determining highway capacity needs. There are some concepts most of us have seen before (induced demand, etc.) and he mentions a few projects like Louisville's Spaghetti Junction and the Katy Freeway.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gxy9/the-broken-algorithm-that-poisoned-american-transportation-v27n3?series=4rbv5r

[cpzilliacus]

A writer for Vice takes a critical look at Travel Demand Modeling as a basis for determining highway capacity needs. There are some concepts most of us have seen before (induced demand, etc.) and he mentions a few projects like Louisville's Spaghetti Junction and the Katy Freeway.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gxy9/the-broken-algorithm-that-poisoned-american-transportation-v27n3?series=4rbv5r

Thank you for sharing this.

The writer seems to be entirely unaware that these same four-step models have been used to justify approval of (and payment for) some atrociously bad (as in low patronage) rail transit projects. 

Sounds to me like the article is just another way to try and stop improvements to the highway network.  It's been tried before.  Notably, Maryland's Route 200 and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge reconstruction (involved Virginia, Maryland and D.C.) were both attacked in court for reasons related to travel demand forecasting models. Those attacks were ultimately dismissed by the federal judicial system.

I also noted that the writer did not mention congestion pricing as an effective way of preventing peak-hour and peak-period traffic congestion.

Nor does the writer seem to be aware that the four-step travel demand forecasting models are in some places being replaced by activity-based models.  This is even mentioned in the Wikipedia article about travel demand forecasting.

[Duke87]

It's Vice, so we know what the opinions of the authors and their bosses are on urban transportation.

I do find it rather amazing that in 2020 outlets like this are still harping on "we need to increase density", not even pausing for a minute to reassess that position in light of current events.