Winter Walking and Cycling

[plam]

Given how swiftly our population is increasing, VMT is going to increase no matter what, even with GRT ridership growing as fast as it usually does. Even though vehicle mode share is slowly decreasing, the raw VMT is still growing.

This is a fundamentally defeatist position. If VMT continues to rise over 30 years (their planning horizon) we will absolutely fail to address climate change. We need to stop accepting failure, we need to plan for success.

The most frustrating thing is that with transportation especially, planning for success is the best way to guarantee success. If instead of building and widening all our roads, we built bike lanes and expanded transit, we would have less cars.

And the examples you cite (growing VMT) are occurring because that is explicitly what we planned for. We need to stop thinking of the results of our decisions as "inevitable" and start thinking of them as "the results of our choices".

I don't think VMT has to increase, and I don't think we can afford for VMT to increase given climate. Although I believe even NZ is not planning for VMT to decrease to get to net 0, they're just planning for more EVs for the most part.