Thread: Calgary Roads
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Old Posted Feb 8, 2012, 4:16 PM
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kw5150 kw5150 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by freeweed View Post
Actually, with the number of absolutes stated in a forum such as this, disproof by counter-example is more than sufficient in most cases. But I'm not so much trying to "disprove" anything here, rather make people actually think about what they're saying. Jumping to the conclusion of "induced demand!" every time road usage goes up is silly. It's on par with "it's colder today, therefore global warming is fake!".

Maybe 13,000 cars are induced. Maybe 3,000. Maybe zero. We can't come to a reasonable conclusion based on one data point, however we can show that not every single one of them is induced.



Absolutely. Witness the stupidity of the Scenic Acres access to the Crowfoot LRT station. To put it bluntly, the (vocal part of the) public was WRONG.

However, planners aren't gods. They're human and subject to the same biases and foils as the rest of us. In many cases in the past, I've seen planning done in ways that make me wonder if people are taking some powerful drugs. Or less facetiously, if realities are being overridden by ideology or political motivations. It's like in the business world when a random MBA is tasked to manage something - a company, a department, a team, whatever. Sometimes it works. And often it bombs miserably, because said MBA has pretty much zero clue about the people and processes s/he's managing. I'm not talking about social engineering or some other buzzword - I just think that a lot of the time, an incomplete understanding and/or improper motivations are to blame.

Remember, "planners" (as a profession/group) are the ones who got us into this mess with our roads in the first place. I highly doubt that every single one of them in the past was wrong about everything, and every single one of them today is right. Planners were the ones who wanted to blast a massive freeway right through the core of Calgary not 50 years ago.
I think you need to attend a few meetings. This is not true and definately NOT black and white. Where do you come up with this stuff?
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