cont'd ...

Dear Aidan,

City centres were initially provided with services,
sewerage, water, electricity, et cetera, to cater for
businesses that operated on average - 40 hours a week.
With the addition now of multiple apartment buildings
and doubling up of office space the services have to
cater 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To upgrade
services that are underground - to cope with this increase
not only disrupts the operation of the city but by its
very nature is phenominally expensive. New developments
on the outer rim can cater for future growth at less cost.

Here's a link that suggests some solutions to the
problem:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-03/congestion-sydney-melbourne-smarter-approach-needed-than-roads/9010164

Aiden your lack of arithmetic is showing I'm afraid.

A ring road around a city 5 kilometres out is 31Ks long, a moderate number of cars can be accommodated on it, & in inner areas of it.

One 15Ks out is 94Ks long, a much higher number of cars can be accommodated on it & inner areas of it.

Just move out to 20Ks from the centre & a ring road is 125Ks long, & the adjacent area can accommodate an infinitely greater number of cars than the entire inner city area.

Decentralisation obviously works to reduce local traffic.

Dear Hassie,

Finally - someone who understands reality.

Thank You.

Hasbeen,
This is not about arithmetic, it's about assumptions. If you put garbage in, you get garbage out no matter how much number crunching you do!

You are relying on the incorrect assumption that everyone is travelling by car. WhereasI'm saying that giving people an attractive alternative to using cars is usually a much better way to tackle congestion. And because you have failed to understand that, you have wrongly assumed there to be an error with my arithmetic!

A bigger area also means the cars travel further - something your calculations have failed to account for.

And BTW if you really think the number of cars you can accommodate 20km out is INFINITELY greater than the entire inner city area, there's a serious problem with your arithmetic as well as your assumptions.

________________________________________________________________________________

Foxy,
I understand the paper bag analogy, but I don't consider it to be a good one. Firstly the transport infrastructure is not like paper. String bags would be a better analogy, but even that's deeply flawed because of the unevenness of the transport network. Secondly, decentralisation is not like putting your shopping into separate bags, because people often have long commutes from one outer suburb to another. Planners may have failed to anticipate that in the 1940s when, apart from cars being far less common, single income families were the norm.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there shouldn't be any decentralisation. But don't expect it to solve the congestion problem..

I assume Aidan you are talking about public transport. Now that is a catastrophe.

It costs more fuel so more emissions per passenger kilometre on public transport than private transport.

It costs much more to transport people by public transport than private transport. So to get people to use it requires considerable subsidy.

In this day & age, when all western governments find it impossible to run at anything but a massive deficit, why do you think adding even more totally unnecessary cost to those deficits is a good idea?