Stephen Rees's blog

This story is in the Vancouver Courier but is also in the Globe but that is behind a paywall so I am not linking to it.

The staff have done a lot of work and found that removing the viaducts actually improves the local network. I have always argued for their removal, since we know for a certainty that traffic adapts to road removal. Traffic is not like a flow of water  – as most models assume – but rather a gas that expands and contracts to fill the space available. Nearly every model that I know of assumes a fixed trip matrix. The models simply try to reassign the same number of trips – generated by land use and population – across the available routes. Real life does not work like that – as a very large number of before and after studies has shown.

However you can be sure that the dinosaurs will never believe that removing a road can make traffic flow better. Even though the traffic calming measures on Point Grey Road showed exactly that effect. None of the forecast carmageddons ever happen. But the idiots who always make these predictions have never been known to apologize after their doom laden predictions fail to materialize.

NPA Coun. George Affleck said he will wait to see the final report in September before stating whether he agrees with staff’s recommendation to demolish the viaducts. Affleck said he is concerned removing the viaducts would have a negative effect on traffic flow in the area.

And he will keep to that line no matter what the final report says and repeat it until once again he is shown to be wrong. Then he will switch his attention to some other project which he will also oppose for the same reason, but be quiet about the ones that worked. Have you ever heard any of them admit they were wrong about bike lanes downtown or the Burrard Bridge?