Commuting trends: transit vs driving vs ...

[ijmorlan]

I don't doubt there is a flaw in my logic or calculations; it was just meant to provoke thought and discussion.

Maybe it was the way I phrase "savings" that is confusing.

It is actually the "additional ongoing expense" of those 10cm of road, every and every year (and that's not even accounting for inflation) is $1,562,548.

I would never envision that it would happen over night that all lanes would be 10cm narrower, but if with each reconstruction project or each new project (the region is expected to build 330 new km of road by 2026) a new standard was applied the amount of additional expense would be reduced.

I'll leave the more advanced logic and calculations to TriTag or someone with a bigger napkin to scribble upon.

Also, public opinion might not be as strong as you think. The region's budget survey found that 23% of respondents strongly agreed that roads were a good value for money, but 31% strongly agreed that transit was good value for money. Similarly, 46% of respondents would not be willing to pay more taxes for roads (44% of respondents would not be willing to pay more taxes for roads, but 55% of that 44% don't ever use transit - so 28%).

I agree that it would be great to have a more detailed study done along the same general lines as your post.

You’re right that in actual application it would be a marginal effect, where each new project would save a little bit, and over time the road network would become less unaffordable. Eventually it adds up. At some point we started buying accessible buses. At first, it didn’t help much at all, because the few we had would show up randomly. Before long though they could promise that certain routes would always be served by accessible vehicles. And of course now the entire fleet is accessible and the LRT system has been built from the beginning to be almost entirely accessible (the only exceptions of which I am aware are a few stations with missing exits, where people with good mobility will be able to use the exits even though they aren’t really there, but people in wheelchairs will be out of luck).

I think with proper framing it could be quite successful. Would probably be good to simultaneously look at smaller fire vehicles, as I understand them to be one driver of excessive road width (and they have the trump card of “safety”, even though your point is that wide roads are unsafe in their own ways).