Musk See: Three Reasons Why Congestion Decreases When Cities ‘Delete’ Road Lanes – Streetsblog USA

Kea Wilson – May 13, 2022
A wildly inaccurate comment from Elon Musk about the traffic impacts of deleting lanes for drivers is prompting a conversation about the little-known phenomenon of “reduced demand” — and how advocates can better debunk common congestion myths that powerful, but often ill-informed, people continue to promulgate
In a much-tweeted-about comment at the Financial Times “Future of the Car” conference on Tuesday, the Tesla and Boring Company founder dismissed the phenomenon of “induced demand” as “one of the single dumbest notions I have ever heard in my entire life,” despite more than a century of research that confirms that increasing lane capacity for drivers only temporarily relieves gridlock before beefed-up roads attract new motorists and development, miring even more travellers in traffic jams along the new and “improved” corridors.