I love induced demand. I'm going to use it to get rich - buy up some abandoned town somewhere, and then pay to run a 100 lane superhighway to it; induced demand means the town will fill up instantly and be hugely valuable!

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seanmcdirmid 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn’t work unless there is currently repressed demand for living in that abandoned town because not enough housing or other factors.

No one is complaining about a housing shortage today in buffalo which used to have twice as much housing stock as it does today, because the demand simply isn’t there now.

	▲	bombcar 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly - induced demand is just a misnomer/misunderstanding. "Pent-up demand" would be a much better way to explain it - but that would reveal that at some point the demand ceases; even SF has some limit - once all 12 billion people live there, demand will level off.

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trollbridge 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Good analogy. I've always considered induced demand a bit of a fantasy.

New businesses the sprout up that market themselves certainly induce a bit of demand, but more lanes and stoplights doesn't exactly motivate people to want to go somewhere.