Turns out that traffic modeling is kind of voodoo, and that predicted increase in traffic in the Bronx that a lot of congestion pricing opponents hung their hats on did not come to pass
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I’ve been trying for years to make “lump of traffic fallacy” happen to no avail.
But seriously it’s amazing how many people believe that “it’s too expensive to drive to my job in midtown so I’ll drive laps around the Bronx / Teaneck instead” is a thing that happens. People drive to _destinations!_
In this case it was more about people who were driving through Manhattan to get between New Jersey and Long Island, but I don't think they had any real data on how many people were doing that to begin with because most traffic data is just counts at a point.
Also, "drive between LI and NJ using Manhattan surface streets for the middle portion" is like the platonic ideal of a thing you try to avoid doing at all costs _already_!
(Ironically, congestion pricing might make it a more viable strategy.)
Very hard to predict diversion v evaporation because the modeling the dumbest person you know’s decision (basically what is needed here) is in fact very hard.
Well if I'm an hourly or mileage based trucker and my boss is paying the tolls, I wouldn't change behavior at all. If I'm an owner operator it's a little different but I'd rather make more deliveries
Anyways it could very well be the speed up is so big truckers to Long Island view CP as worth it. An obvious place for tolling then has to be the CBX. See who we can convince to get off that thing.
Long time ago I took a class at Cal where transportation modeling was briefly covered (in concept) and they had a guest speaker from the MPO and another student asked "since this is a 20 year projection, do you ever put in data from 20 years ago to see if you get today as a result?" The answer: no
Makes sense that if a large percentage of cars driving through the Bronx were driving through it specifically to get to Manhattan and then they stopped going to Manhattan that would mean they would not still drive through the Bronx anyway.
These cars have no reason to drive through the Bronx now.
This should serve as severe caution on how we use the environmental review that predicted this: The review blocks approvals for many years, but it doesn’t even predict correctly!
The issue as I understand it is the noise cameras can’t be on heavily trafficked multi-lane roads because it can’t well distinguish the noise source so it ends up on smaller cross-town routes. It’s not great, but it’s still something and I hope it continually expands.
Traffic engineering is so funny to learn because there's very little scientific underpinning it's basically all empirical guesswork. You'd have an equation with like a random (2.31) as a coefficient and ask about it and the professor would basically say well that's just what made the numbers crunch.
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But seriously it’s amazing how many people believe that “it’s too expensive to drive to my job in midtown so I’ll drive laps around the Bronx / Teaneck instead” is a thing that happens. People drive to _destinations!_
(Ironically, congestion pricing might make it a more viable strategy.)
If anything, the lack of congestion would make trucks MORE likely to go through the zone.
These cars have no reason to drive through the Bronx now.