Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[Markass the Worst]

Slight PL, but I've spoken with Jason personally.

My condolences. Was this in person or online or what? (Don't PL more if you don't want to)

He is an enormous douche, and he flies off the handle the moment you even allude to any kind of relationship his personal wealth might have to his ideology (he has an extremely cushy six-figure online "job" that allows him to live wherever he wants.)

I figured that's what "Product Management Consultant" meant. Do you know what company it is?

If by his own admission his videos aren't for the purpose of "fixing," these places, then they're basically just bragging and schadenfreude.

He says he wants other people to do the work of making videos for the purpose of "fixing" the US & Canada and the only purpose of his videos is to "orange-pill" and radicalize people who have slight doubts about cars and suburbs. So, yes.

Also, this is neither here nor there, but all the Dutch people I've talked to about this really do not want Americans and Canadians moving to the Netherlands. They're the ones who had to work to make Amsterdam such a nice place to live, yet a bunch of rich American liberals are flooding in because they fucked up their own country and gave up on fixing it.

Not only that but rich American liberals always import their shitty policies and will fuck up the place they immigrate to as well. Same thing happens in the US with California refugees moving to Texas or Florida.

As much as Jason jerks himself off about how much of a saint he is for living in Amsterdam, the locals aren't fond of his breed of transplant at all.

No doubt because he's caused a flood of bugpeople who've moved to the Netherlands in droves.

I guaran-fucking-tee you guys that Jason still owns and regularly drives a car or even multiple cars, and that's to say nothing of the enormous carbon footprint he leaves with his constant air travel. He's the environmental equivalent to a champagne socialist, and it doesn't surprise me that he's chummy with literal champagne socialist breadtubers.

Not really surprising. We already know he rents cars even when he was living "car-free" in Toronto.

To be fair in his collab with Climate Town he admits he only moved to the Netherlands for his "sanity" and the reduced environmental impact is just a bonus, but it does make it all the more aggravating whenever he brings up muh climate change.

 

[Bani]

My condolences. Was this in person or online or what? (Don't PL more if you don't want to)


I figured that's what "Product Management Consultant" meant. Do you know what company it is?


He says he wants other people to do the work of making videos for the purpose of "fixing" the US & Canada and the only purpose of his videos is to "orange-pill" and radicalize people who have slight doubts about cars and suburbs. So, yes.


Not only that but rich American liberals always import their shitty policies and will fuck up the place they immigrate to as well. Same thing happens in the US with California refugees moving to Texas or Florida.


No doubt because he's caused a flood of bugpeople who've moved to the Netherlands in droves.


Not really surprising. We already know he rents cars even when he was living "car-free" in Toronto.

To be fair in his collab with Climate Town he admits he only moved to the Netherlands for his "sanity" and the reduced environmental impact is just a bonus, but it does make it all the more aggravating whenever he brings up muh climate change.

It wasn't in person, thankfully, but I'm not going to specify beyond that. I'm not at liberty to answer questions about his employer, sorry.

I think the biggest problem with American transplants is actually one that goes beyond party lines. Individualism is a core tenet of American identity and culture, for better or for worse. This is also the case for other Anglophone countries like Canada and the UK, to a lesser extent. However, most European and East Asian countries are collectivist cultures, often with some kind of ingrained philosophy about the ills of "tall poppies." This is why countries like Japan, Sweden, Denmark, etc. are fiscally liberal; a collectivist culture is going to be inherently more amenable to higher taxes and more spending on public facilities. However, collectivism also begets conformity, which is why populism and xenophobia are on the rise (or already prevalent) in these countries despite Anglophone countries viewing them as "liberal." There's a strong case to be made for identity politics also being the product of Anglophone individualism, at least in part. It's basically what you get when people apply Marxist concepts of class to the inherently individualist concept of personal identity.

So here's the rub: what happens when you take someone with a deeply engendered sense of individualism, and drop them into a small, collectivist country? You get a tall ass poppy who doesn't realize that they come across and selfish and entitled to the locals. My military acquaintances who were stationed overseas often remark on this phenomenon.

 

[AnaphylacticShock]

Obviously everyone who makes YouTube videos is trying to put the best version of themselves forward. Jason's best version is a whiney, smug, spoiled rotten brat. It's not surprising to hear he's a douche in real life.
Many people from countries all throughout the world would give a kidney to have the opportunity to live in London Ontario Canada and all this insufferable prick does is shit on it.
The biggest problem London had wasn't the "stroads" or the cul de sacs. It was Jason. Certainly the QOL improved drastically when he left.

 

[Womble of Wimbledon]

I watched that stupid NotJustBikes video on the 1950s car video and realised for the first time I've never played his videos at 1x speed. Literally every time I have had it running at 1.5x speed. Holy fuck he talks like a lobotomy patient, what is wrong with him??

 

[Markass the Worst]

I watched that stupid NotJustBikes video on the 1950s car video and realised for the first time I've never played his videos at 1x speed. Literally every time I have had it running at 1.5x speed. Holy fuck he talks like a lobotomy patient, what is wrong with him??

I played that video at 2x speed and it was still unbearable. It's a common trend in most urbanist videos, I always have them at 1.5x at minimum because they drag on for so fucking long.

 

[LaxerBRO]

PSA: Deboonking the Traffic Soyboys Part 7 - It's not About Walkability, it's About Fuck Cars - The Daily Rake

I especially enjoyed part 4 of our series here, where we took on the total refusal for these antifas to acknowledge that crime is more important than a lack of bike lanes. This is something universally denied by the Armchair Urbanists, although everyone in real life knows this to be true...

dailyrake.ca

I see the issue of crime is being discussed so I will bring up the CityNerd video on September 22, 2022 by CityNerd:

I will agree with him that crime is granular but disagree on his solution of living in certain areas and address economic missteps he made.

The first issue I have is that living in a walkable and safer neighborhood is not an insulation against crime. This is doesn't suggest that the crime in these areas is not lower but it fails to address how one would continue to live in such an area. If a person did not have the luxury of a work from home job or is not employed in a safe area this opens an individual up to higher chances crime. With a personal vehicle, their is an opportunity to flee at a relatively fast pace or to use the vehicle as a weapon if threated. When one is on public transit or even on a bike they are more susceptible. Additionally, the lack of a somewhat secure vehicle hampers the ability of a person to carry items that can be used defensively such as a firearm or pepper spray. This handicaps the ability of successful self defense if threatened.

Second, the areas that CityNerd suggests are not average for Albuquerque but 24% more. Pulling the data from his video, I calculated the price per square foot for Albuquerque, NM and compared this to an average of the areas he mentioned; the median price per square foot is $187 in Albuquerque while the average price per square foot is $246. Taken together, his opinion about crime just seem to be an upper middle class / work from home professional perspective.

Albuquerque Real Estate

Another suggestion to crime is the "Eyes on the Street" solution that is preached by many of the NJB / FuckCars crowd.



This solution sounds good in theory but fails in practice. I would venture that most of the users of the NJB / FuckCars crowd would ignore a POC if they were engaged in suspicious actions by a bike and would be extremely hesitant to notify the police. The outright fear of being labeled a Ken or Karen and a racist would just lead them to ignore such instances. Furthermore, the research and my personal experience suggests that most people are engrossed in themselves and do not pay close enough attention to their surroundings.

From Studies regarding Eyes on the Street:

Do more eyes on the street reduce Crime? Evidence from Chicago's safe passage program​

Chicago's Safe Passage program attempts to ensure the safety of student traveling to and from schools by placing civilian guards along specified routes
...
Our findings suggest that the program is an efficient and cost effective alternative way of policing with direct effects on crime and student's outcomes. Exploiting both spatial and temporal variation in the implementation of the program, we find that the presence of guards results in lower levels of crime, with violent crime declining by 14% on average. The rate of absenteeism is estimated to decline by 2.5 percentage points. We find no evidence of spillovers of crime to areas that are not along the Safe Passage routes.

Just looking at research on Eyes on the Street indicate that the variable are security guards (with varying levels of training) not random civilians engrossed in their phones or conversation.

 

[Muttley]

holy shit, there's a god damn thread on my least favorite YouTube channel ever.
fucking smug Eurofag shit I accidentally clicked on while watching people optimize City Skylines roads.

before anyone says, "hurr he's from America/Canada/whatever"...
I don't care he's still a Eurofag.
Eurofag is a state of mind, not a place or supranational background.

I'd rather die than live in this faggot's ideal city.
the things he admires sound like literal hell to me and he has zero concept that his perspectives could be wrong or subjective.
It's like some faggot hipster who worked in UX design took up amateur urban planning and riding his fixie as hobbies, and this channel is the end result.

bike lanes are gay, but these faggots riding in the road is worse. and I'm definitely gonna rage if I get stuck behind another train or bus.
where's the nearest gas station? I need to top off my SUV, and there better a freeway onramp nearby damnit.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Slight PL, but I've spoken with Jason personally. He is an enormous douche, and he flies off the handle the moment you even allude to any kind of relationship his personal wealth might have to his ideology (he has an extremely cushy six-figure online "job" that allows him to live wherever he wants.)

This is why I can't stand Silicon Valley types like Jason. If you want to retire early and do some less profitable but more fun side project, then good for you...but you have to understand that people can't and don't live like you, and preaching from the position you are stokes resentment, especially if you antagonize the common man.

Obviously everyone who makes YouTube videos is trying to put the best version of themselves forward. Jason's best version is a whiney, smug, spoiled rotten brat. It's not surprising to hear he's a douche in real life.

Enh...a lot of YouTubers will exaggerate and play the "I'm just playing a character" card when they get called out for being an asshole. I always find that the way that e-celebs interact with fans (mostly being cordial) is a good indicator how much of a decent person they are.

 

[CFC-12]

One of my coworkers talks about this guy. Watched a few videos and GODDAMN he's insufferable. There's nothing worse than online political content where the person making the video talks like they have 100% authority and know exactly what they're talking about, and anyone who disagrees is either brainwashed with propaganda or a paid corporate shill. The worst part of this guy's videos is that so many of the people watching them don't know the first thing about infrastructure. Then they watch a few NJB videos, and boom: suddenly they act like they understand 100+ years of North American urban planning. Car bad, train good. Muh heckin walkability index.

I drive a big old 90s car that guzzles gas like a motherfucker. Can't wait for the day some activist decides to try and let the air out of my tires or dump paint all over my shit. Fair warning to them: I keep a claw hammer under the passenger seat.

I will concede that cars don't make sense everywhere or for everyone. A lot of cities and urban centres you can get by just walking or taking public transit, and that's fine. Dense cities have a lot more options for transportation. But for the vast majority of people who don't want to live in a cramped concrete hellscape, you're gonna be moving somewhere less dense and that naturally means having some personal form of transportation. So unless he wants us to go back to horse drawn carriages, cars are our only option.

Also goddamn I wish he'd stop trying to gaslight people into believing bikes are just as effective as cars at transporting people. You ever tried to bike to work in -15 weather while it's snowing? I have, and it fucking sucks dude.

 

[Amber the Hedgehog]

before anyone says, "hurr he's from America/Canada/whatever"...
I don't care he's still a Eurofag.
Eurofag is a state of mind, not a place or supranational background.

Have to agree. My mom is a eurofagish, my dad isn't and my grandma definitely wasn't, all finns. There is difference between being or not from Europe and thinking that Europe is fundamentally more righteous because liberal, progressive and ever so fancy. It's often mixed with really wierd and unreasonable distaste towards US.

I think this why my grandma never fell into it. One of her most beloved things was an old card board box from America. Some of her relatives that had moved US sended a Christmas package that included many things that were hard to get in post WW2 Finland witch made that Christmas very special to her. Later on her life she traveled to US to meet them in person and see the country in general. I think that connection made her appreciate US and she never looked down on it no matter how fashionable that became.

This is why I can't stand Silicon Valley types like Jason. If you want to retire early and do some less profitable but more fun side project, then good for you...but you have to understand that people can't and don't live like you, and preaching from the position you are stokes resentment, especially if you antagonize the common man.




Enh...a lot of YouTubers will exaggerate and play the "I'm just playing a character" card when they get called out for being an asshole. I always find that the way that e-celebs interact with fans (mostly being cordial) is a good indicator how much of a decent person they are.

Yeah. IRL meetings and if they can put the character down are pretty good indications. All people play to crowd to a degree and putting on a character is perfectly valid technique but characters are more often than not built from actual experiences. Everyone is at least little bit of an asshole but it's very easy to fall into being asshole 24/7 if you don't let others to call you out.

 

[Bani]

This is why I can't stand Silicon Valley types like Jason. If you want to retire early and do some less profitable but more fun side project, then good for you...but you have to understand that people can't and don't live like you, and preaching from the position you are stokes resentment, especially if you antagonize the common man.

He's not even a techbro, though; he works in marketing. This whole infrastructure thing is pretty much a hobby for him, and as far as I can tell, he has no formal education in it. Not to devalue personal experiences as a basis for discussion, but they're pretty much the only data he brings to the table. Everything else is just information regurgitated from other urbanists, as many people have already pointed out here.

He definitely does have the smug err of a techbro, though, so I can see why you'd call him one lmao.

 

[Box Tie]

Most of these people, the progs and crypto commies they overlap with aren't really interested in resolving the issues they proclaim to care about, its all about being seen to care, to be in opposition of The Bad and to be Working Towards a Better Tomorrow. Being good and correct is their identity, which is why they're immune to facts and reasoned discourse. They are in a Movie-Blobbian turn of phrase, believers, not thinkers.

The entire philosophy is anti family and anti liberty, but I suppose its okay to give these things up for the greater good.

 

[Idiot Asshole]

It's an older term than "stroad" for sure but I think it was back in the 1970s when people (particularly out of California) were concerned with freeways, nuclear power plants, and other unpleasantries around them, but now is a slur for people who don't want to see their neighborhood disappear in favor of multi-story bughives. Ironically, the NIMBYs of the past were probably closer to their views than they'd like to admit.

I won't PL with too much detail but over a decade or so ago there was this big campaign among lefties around where I live where they were demanding, demanding that a railway line be built to some part of town that was already well-connected public transport-wise, it just didn't have a railway line. Most of those who were crying out for the line didn't live there of course, but they were adamant that those that did should have to deal with compulsory purchases, years of construction and their community being divided in two just so that they could feel better about saving the earth.

Anyway that railway line never materialized and that part of town is still doing well to this day, but soon afterwards the local government greenlit a railway upgrade that would involve several years of construction which would intrude on several of the inner-city bughive parts of town. The same lefties, who just a few years previous were crying out for more trains to somewhere they didn't even live, were absolutely livid and screaming about how these works were going to destroy their communities, how this was a gross display of force by the government, that the project wasn't even wanted or needed, et cetera.

Those are NIMBYs. Assholes who demand that everyone else but them make sacrifices then cry foul when the authorities turn around and make them endure what they expect everyone else to. And I reserve my right to use that label as much as I want, no matter how much those very same assholes dilute it by slapping it onto any poor random soul who just wants to preserve their quiet, nice neighborhood.

 

[Absolutego]

I won't PL with too much detail but over a decade or so ago there was this big campaign among lefties around where I live where they were demanding, demanding that a railway line be built to some part of town that was already well-connected public transport-wise, it just didn't have a railway line. Most of those who were crying out for the line didn't live there of course, but they were adamant that those that did should have to deal with compulsory purchases, years of construction and their community being divided in two just so that they could feel better about saving the earth.

Anyway that railway line never materialized and that part of town is still doing well to this day, but soon afterwards the local government greenlit a railway upgrade that would involve several years of construction which would intrude on several of the inner-city bughive parts of town. The same lefties, who just a few years previous were crying out for more trains to somewhere they didn't even live, were absolutely livid and screaming about how these works were going to destroy their communities, how this was a gross display of force by the government, that the project wasn't even wanted or needed, et cetera.

Those are NIMBYs. Assholes who demand that everyone else but them make sacrifices then cry foul when the authorities turn around and make them endure what they expect everyone else to. And I reserve my right to use that label as much as I want, no matter how much those very same assholes dilute it by slapping it onto any poor random soul who just wants to preserve their quiet, nice neighborhood.

My absolute favorite example of CA lefties being NIMBYs is when a group in the Mission in SF rushed to declare a run-down laundromat a historic building so they could avoid having it torn down and replaced with a multi-story apartment building the city desperately needed, because something something gentrification something.
Like, when the rich suits in Marin and elsewhere throw a tantrum about infrastructure being built in their neighborhoods, it's old hat landed gentry throwing a tantrum, business as usual. That's been a staple of Californian politics ever since the gold rush created the first generation of stuffy local aristocrats. The prog activists themselves throwing a fit over it happening in their neighborhood is vastly funnier.

 

[Lord Quackers]

Re: that 50s video: Yes, I would fall for it, because the houses were cheap in the suburbs and the 60s crime explosion would vindicate me

 

[Overpriced Gaming Chair]

Off-topic, but since California zoning laws were mentioned...

TL;DW: Man wants to demolish a laundromat he owns and build an apartment complex in a city suffering from severe housing shortage. Sounds like city would be happy?

Of course not! He is being drowned in red tape in an attempt to coerce him to sell the land so 100% affordable housing can be built instead of the mandatory 11%. As a result, the laundromat still stands 5 years later and keeps operating to help cover the legal fees that have gone past one million dollars.

 

[CFC-12]

It's Time To Let Coal Die | Climate Town

A VERY cool way to waste time & money. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ClimateTown sUbScRiBe FoR mOrE ViDeOs: https://www.youtube.com/c/climatetown?sub_conf...

www.youtube.com

I gotta say, of all these left-wing urbanist grifters, Mr. Climate Town is definitely the most likeable in my opinion. The shit he talks about is (for the most part) usually verifiable fact, albeit with a nice thick sheen of agendaposting, and he definitely works harder to make these videos than NJB and other low effort breadtubers.

Really it kind of makes me sad because he still ends up falling into the same logical pitfalls as most of his compatriots. The video is essentially "coal is bad, but solar + wind are good". He glosses over the fact that coal-fired electrical generation has been declining in the US for years NOT because of renewables but because of the massive expansion of natural gas. He completely ignores hydroelectric and nuclear despite the fact they're far better at providing utility scale low-carbon electricity.

At one point he actually does mention how solar generation isn't a reliable source of electricity because the sun isn't always shining, but he pretty much just handwaves this issue away with "don't worry, we have battery storage now!" and moves on to the next point without even elaborating. Also he doesn't even mention coal use outside of the US, or even coal usage in the US for things other than electrical generation (cement production, blast furnaces, commercial heating etc.)

There's a new trend I notice with these individuals who talk about "mass deployment" of renewables (usually just solar and wind) as some sort of epic win when they're only operating at peak capacity, like, 20% of the time unless they're in the middle of Arizona or something. It doesn't matter how much "installed capacity" you have when half the time it's completely useless and the other half of the time it's generating far lower than rated output. Meanwhile you have coal/gas/nuclear plants that can operate near max capacity for days or weeks at a time. This website that's owned by a solar provider has some pretty good charts that show just how abysmal solar generating capacity can be in a lot of the US (Cleveland, Ohio for example averages less than 3 hours a day worth of full generating capacity in the winter months!)

I don't know. Maybe in the future Mr. Climate Town will address these things. Or maybe he'll just keep pretending that there's not more to the story than what he addresses in his videos. He's also correct about CCA systems failing and the shittiness of working in the coal industry. Again, it kind of makes me sad because he's clearly smart enough and done enough research to know there's more to the story than "coal bad solar good". But grifters gonna grift, I suppose. I could probably go on about this in even more detail but this comment is already way too fuckin' long so I'm gonna cut it off here.


tl;dr Stop trying to make solar power happen. It's not going to happen.

 

[Markass the Worst]

It's Time To Let Coal Die | Climate Town

A VERY cool way to waste time & money. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ClimateTown sUbScRiBe FoR mOrE ViDeOs: https://www.youtube.com/c/climatetown?sub_conf...

www.youtube.com

I gotta say, of all these left-wing urbanist grifters, Mr. Climate Town is definitely the most likeable in my opinion. The shit he talks about is (for the most part) usually verifiable fact, albeit with a nice thick sheen of agendaposting, and he definitely works harder to make these videos than NJB and other low effort breadtubers.

Really it kind of makes me sad because he still ends up falling into the same logical pitfalls as most of his compatriots. The video is essentially "coal is bad, but solar + wind are good". He glosses over the fact that coal-fired electrical generation has been declining in the US for years NOT because of renewables but because of the massive expansion of natural gas. He completely ignores hydroelectric and nuclear despite the fact they're far better at providing utility scale low-carbon electricity.

At one point he actually does mention how solar generation isn't a reliable source of electricity because the sun isn't always shining, but he pretty much just handwaves this issue away with "don't worry, we have battery storage now!" and moves on to the next point without even elaborating. Also he doesn't even mention coal use outside of the US, or even coal usage in the US for things other than electrical generation (cement production, blast furnaces, commercial heating etc.)

There's a new trend I notice with these individuals who talk about "mass deployment" of renewables (usually just solar and wind) as some sort of epic win when they're only operating at peak capacity, like, 20% of the time unless they're in the middle of Arizona or something. It doesn't matter how much "installed capacity" you have when half the time it's completely useless and the other half of the time it's generating far lower than rated output. Meanwhile you have coal/gas/nuclear plants that can operate near max capacity for days or weeks at a time. This website that's owned by a solar provider has some pretty good charts that show just how abysmal solar generating capacity can be in a lot of the US (Cleveland, Ohio for example averages less than 3 hours a day worth of full generating capacity in the winter months!)

I don't know. Maybe in the future Mr. Climate Town will address these things. Or maybe he'll just keep pretending that there's not more to the story than what he addresses in his videos. He's also correct about CCA systems failing and the shittiness of working in the coal industry. Again, it kind of makes me sad because he's clearly smart enough and done enough research to know there's more to the story than "coal bad solar good". But grifters gonna grift, I suppose. I could probably go on about this in even more detail but this comment is already way too fuckin' long so I'm gonna cut it off here.


tl;dr Stop trying to make solar power happen. It's not going to happen.

Spoiler: archive

He probably comes across as more reasonable because he focuses more on environmental impact than anything else, which is more objective than the standard "cars bad" talking points. Not that climate change discourse isn't chock full of bad arguments and logical fallacies either.

 

[CFC-12]

He probably comes across as more reasonable because he focuses more on environmental impact than anything else, which is more objective than the standard "cars bad" talking points. Not that climate change discourse isn't chock full of bad arguments and logical fallacies either.

Yeah. When you're talking about stuff that's more or less centered around objective fact it's a lot harder to get into ideological pissing contest territory.

I mostly just wish he'd step back and look at the situation from different angles. Energy infrastructure is very complicated and solving contemporary environmental issues are a lot more complex than "well just switch the fossil fuels with renewables! ez pz". I'd probably legitimately enjoy watching his shit if he properly acknowledged all the existing shortcomings and issues with current year renewable technology. Instead it just feels super unbalanced. All the issues with fossil fuels are magnified and all the problems with renewables are more or less hand-waved away. Yes, climate change is a problem. Sure, whatever. But that's not literally the only issue humanity is facing and we can't just ignore all our other problems to focus on one specifically.

Also I just watched the NJB video posted a page or so back. I guess having stock footage of traffic jams counts as an argument against driving cars. For someone who talks about "cities going bankrupt because of highways" he sure doesn't bring up many examples. The closest he gets is mentioning that fucking Detroit demolished a freeway because they couldn't afford to maintain it anymore, which is just so, so stupid. Automakers were already beginning to pull out of the city before the highway was even finished. Detroit had been declining since the mid 20th century when industry began pulling out of the city center and opening factories in nearby towns with more land to build larger facilities. Once all the jobs left, so did all the citizens, and so did their tax base. Implying that somehow the reason Detroit went broke was because they spent all their money maintaining roads is stupid at best and disingenuous at worst.

 

[The ShekelMonster]

To Markass, thanks for the kind words. I imagined the series to be 2-5 pieces long, but these people are so obnoxiously wrong about everything that I felt I just had to keep going. I can't quote your post for some reason, but I did have to respond to this.

"The video isn't that bad but I notice they drop the "people will fill up its capacity" argument entirely and start talking about things in terms of costs and benefits like a mature adult instead of going "JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO" like a spastic. So at the end of the day the "induced demand" argument isn't even a real argument and it just sounds like one so they can dunk on cars because cars bad. If you have to radically change your argument to make it make sense then it's a terrible argument and should never be used."

Yes, but they still do proportionally induced demand in favour of whatever public transit fetish they have currently going. Remember, it's very reasonable for a small percentage of latent demand, or even a large percentage of latent demand to be satisfied with a new highway. What's not reasonable is when they look at buses that are already at a dismal 5% average capacity, and then say "but if we make them run 10x more often we'll get 10x more ridership because muh induced demand." You might find you have the exact same number of riders and rider-hours. Or maybe you got 1% more riders, so instead of buses that are 0.5% average capacity, they are 0.505% average capacity because Dave and Chris occasionally ride the bus now. Our 10x increase in buses resulted in 1.01x total ridership compared to the start.

If the buses were at 90% average capacity and you increased the routes by 10x, it would be reasonable to not expect them to be at 9% average capacity, what they would be if no new ridership emerged. Perhaps they'd be at 45% average capacity, since there are undoubtedly many people who want to take the bus but won't because they're full. In this case our 10x increase in buses resulted in 5x total ridership compared to the start.

It's the assumption of infinite demand that gets me. If everyone could teleport, we would not take infinite trips.

But anyway, even Vox made an entire video around the premise that Boston deleted a highway when they literally never did this even a little bit, instead building it underground.