When those who insist how Seattle “must” continue to have a waterfront freeway of some sort pontificate over how irresponsible it is to get rid of the Viaduct, consider what happened when the San Francisco Bay Area lost a critical freeway interchange last week:
The MacArthur Maze, which links several vital East Bay highways, is used by more than 200,000 cars each day. Many commuters and transportation officials had predicted gridlock would paralyze roads around the closed connectors, which together carry some 80,000 cars daily.Full story here.But the commute wasn’t much worse last week than normal. Many who normally travel on the connectors opted for public transportation or carpools, officials surmised.
This should come as no real surprise. It is, of course, the logical flipside of the well-documented “induced traffic” phenomenon, which is when creating freeway capacity doesn’t relieve congestion as much as anticipated, because the new capacity just encourages people to drive more.
Well, now. The same Lebanese government that was all boo-hoo-hoo and in moral outrage at the injustice of being attacked by Israel over what a small amount of Lebanese did is now savagely attacking Palestinian refugee camps because of what a small amount of Palestinians did.
Granted, it is hardly a surprise to see a government doing this, but it bears commenting on anyhow.
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