[sustran] Re: Indian roads - planes, cows, elephants, mosques

[Martin Cassini]

Thanks Marcus. Perhaps I'm ploughing a different, though related,
furrow. I'm not nailing my intuition to any particular mast, but I
suppose believe in a kind of Gaia principle: the ability of humans to
find an optimum level of efficiency and quality of life without much
overt interference. With increasing awareness of the undesirable
consequences of burning oil, plus laudable lobbying by car-free groups,
plus moves towards sustainable energy sources and living modes, plus
more compact and interesting urban developments, it seems to me that
urban sprawl and over-reliance on car use will soon be perceived as
undesirable roads to nowhere, and it will all come right in the end. So
I prefer a live-and-let live approach with minimum coercion and maximum
enlightenment (if that makes any sense ...)

Martin

-----Original Message-----
From:
sustran-discuss-bounces+martincassini=blueyonder.co.uk at list.jca.apc.org
[mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+martincassini=blueyonder.co.uk at list.jca.
apc.org] On Behalf Of Markus Sander
Sent: 07 May 2007 12:57
To: Global 'South' Sustainable Transport
Subject: [sustran] Re: Indian roads - planes, cows, elephants, mosques


Hi Martin,

> I just have my doubts about the claim that traffic will expand to fill

> the available road space is true. There are thousands of miles of 
> virtually empty roads even here in the UK. It seems to me that

Of course it's not true for every road everywhere. It occurs where
traffic problems are solved by making traffic 'faster', e.g. by reducing
idle times, increasing speed, etc. This is just 'curing symptoms' and
worseing of the causes. Idle times are an *effect* of traffic problems,
not the *cause*.

If you eliminate idle time, the road capacity will be higher. Short term
local effect: less congestion, shorter traveling time. Long term global
effect: Congestion at the next bottle neck, longer ways.

The winners are supermarkets and employer - they can centralize into
shopping centres and business parks. The losers are people that life
between residential area and those centres. Also all commuters 'lose',
because they have to pay for their car, the roads and so on that
otherwise would be unnecassary (= if there was a 'walkable'
infrastructure).

-- 
 (c) markus
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