A lot of things of value are very hard to measure.
X degree influences can be very hard to measure.
You may hit your target metric, but secondary effects may be making the whole system worse.
Ideally you could A/B a parallel universe to isolate your specifc change, but that is challenging.
For sure, happy to open up the conversation again later
Very little of the demand is demand to drive a car. It’s mostly demand to travel as effectively as possible.
When you build out road networks you make traveling by car more effective, increasing demand on that specific mode.
When you build out transit networks you make traveling by transit more effective, increasing demand on that specific mode.
When you have well designed cities, you reduce the demand for travel, period.
Higher population centers have favorable economics for transit vs. Personal vehicles. And are more impacted by pollutants.
Low population centers have favorable economics for personal vehicles vs. Transit. And are less impacted by pollutants.
That’s a description of the dynamics anyway.
I imagine vast majority of people would agree that folks that live in the densist cities need transit, and those living in a forest need a personal vehicle. The debate occurs somewhere in between of the extremes.
Personally I’m of the opinion that we skew too far towards cars, because the true costs/externalities are harder to see, so what seems like favorable economics is actually just socializing the costs.
Alternatively, if there was no Google or Google like company, we would likely be much further along in tech, and have better functioning democracies. They have limited innovation in maps and search products. They rely on being big to be competitive. Their products are pretty poor given their engineering team size. Digital advertising: they bought their way into a quasi monopoly, siphoning dollars from people that actually create things.
I like this - as a fan of democracy.
Democracy costs, I think it’s OK that it takes a bit of time, more representatives, more votes is OK.
More civic engagement is a positive. Hearing the viewpoints of your neighbour is positive.
A really interesting dynamic, is that you would be creating a strong pipeline of leaders/representatives developing bottom up.