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Thursday, November 17, 2005

Discretionary Trips

Posted by on November 17 at 13:44 PM

In this week’s Mayor Gridlock cover story, I wrote, “[People’s Waterfront Coalition leader] Moon points out that when the viaduct was closed temporarily for months after the February 2001 earthquake, traffic in the area fell by 27 percent—down to 80,000 trips a day. Out of necessity, commuters changed their habits and the sky didn’t fall.”

Obviously, the Viaduct wasn’t closed for months. It was closed for days. Moon actually said that when the Viaduct reopened, the number of trips on it fell to 80,000 per day from 110,000 prior to the earthquake. That means roughly 30,000 trips were discretionary, probably not really necessary, and stopped happening. This trend continued for a few months after the Viaduct was closed and reopened.