A pair of related articles that challenge conventional wisdom.
First: In the Atlantic CitiLab, Eric Jaffe writes on tired traffic myths — zombie ideas that stalk our discourse on transportation and cities, and refuse to die. It’s all sort of funny, to be sure, except when billions of scarce dollars go out the door in service of the myths.
Case in point — Myth #1: More Roads Mean Less Traffic. Yup, good old induced demand again, plus a side order of congestion pricing.
Second: “Our Old Planning Rules of Thumb are ‘All Thumbs’ “, written by Joe Cortwright in Strong Towns. He discusses such rules, and proposes new ones.
Of course, these new “rules of thumb” are just a beginning. There’s a lot of work to be done to un-learn and re-think the unfortunate heuristics we’ve employed in thinking about transportation planning and land use. But as these examples illustrate, re-thinking these issues isn’t a purely technical matter: it depends critically on re-imagining the way we visualize and tell stories about how our transportation system works.
