California Induced Travel Calculator featured in the New York Times

The California Induced Travel Calculator, created by BlinkTag, was featured in the New York Times article about Colorado's new policy of not expanding highways.

“In 2019, a team led by Susan Handy, a professor of environmental science at the University of California, Davis, developed an induced demand calculator to help others translate how specific expansions led to more cars on the road.

In Colorado, Mr. Holland and several other climate activists used Dr. Handy’s calculator to do more than measure increased driving. In 2021, they modeled the greenhouse gas effects of all the projects in the state transportation’s agency’s 10-year plan, which included more than 175 miles of lanes added to highways. They found that the projects could increase annual greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 70,000 more cars and trucks on the road.

The transportation agency disputed the figure, but the calculation nonetheless changed the conversation, Mr. Holland said. Until that point, “nobody was actually putting real emissions numbers behind highway expansion,” he said. The analysis galvanized climate activists, who had largely left highway fights to people like Mr. Tafoya, those living in communities directly affected by expansion.”