Ross Gittin in the SMH writes some good stuff, and this is, lightly, one of hie best: Stuck in traffic, blinded by bulldust.
Our politicians profess to be greatly concerned about congestion, but are they ever likely to do much about it? Probably not.
And I confess that, if I were a pollie, I wouldn't either. The best solution to congestion is congestion. That is, ignore it and it will fix itself.
It devol;ves into a nice discussion on modelling and the assumptions needed and contains this excellent line
Since we've never tried those measures before, how could the modellers know how we'd react?
If only all those involved in planning, forecasting and policy development could really GET the idea that the outcomes of their interventions in complex systems are totally unpredictable, that, in fact, we proceed on a "suck it and see" basis and we should be building into every decision a clear understanding that we might be wrong and we may need to change again, quite soon.
What I REALLY hate is the pollies and management people saying "if we do this then this happens and that happens". They have lost the use of the future tense, let alone the conditional, they live in their own rosy future and when it fails to happen their answer is always that it was imperfectly understood, implemented or received and what we really need is even more of something that is already not working.
After years of trying to solve congestion problems by building more roads and accident rates by advertising campaigns, it turns out that all we had to do was boost the price of petrol till it hurt.
Car use in countries like the US and NZ is down around 3% based on fuel sales while in the US accident rates are down around 9% and public transport use is way up with all its environmental benefits (with health benefits from walking further still to show up)
We have a mechanism for achieving all these benefits, drive up the price of fuel; not that you will find any of our leaders suggesting that, partly because they don't have the cojones, but mostly because public transport use is anathema to their philosophy, and as we all know, there is no "market" and certainly little "innovation" in philosophies. Yet.
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