FIRST Everybody likes Jane Jacobs, right? She was famous for fighting traffic engineers, and took them to task repeatedly and effectively in her masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Most planners and many public servants swear by that book, but few have read Dark Age Ahead, in which, forty years later, she took off the gloves. Until traffic engineers change their tune on induced demand, here is the statement from Jane Jacobs that every public official and planner needs to tape prominently above his or her desk: It is popularly assumed that when universities give science degrees in traffic engineering, as they do, they are recognizing aboveboard expert knowledge. But they aren’t. They are perpetrating a fraud upon students and upon the public when they award credentials in this supposed expertise.22 And a bit more: I thought sadly: “Here they are, another generation of nice, miseducated young men, about to waste their careers in a fake science that cares nothing about evidence; that doesn’t ask a fruitful question in the first place and that, when unexpected evidence turns up anyhow, doesn’t pursue it.… This incurious profession pulls its conclusions about the meaning of evidence out of thin air— sheer guesswork—even when it does deign to notice evidence.… In the meantime, each year students have poured forth from universities, a clear, harmful case of education surrendered to credentialism. One wonders at the docility of the students who evidently must be satisfied enough with the credentials to be uncaring about the lack of education.23 Perhaps inspired by Jane, a few brave, young, credentialed traffic engineers have recently had the nerve to come out of the closet. Foremost among them is probably Charles Marohn, who published the following piece in Grist. It is so powerful, and important, that it deserves quoting at length: CONFESSIONS OF A RECOVERING ENGINEER
After graduating from college with a civil engineering degree, I found myself working in my home town for a local engineering firm doing mostly municipal engineering (roads, sewer pipe, water pipe, stormwater). A fair percentage of my time was spent convincing people that, when it came to their road, I knew more than they did. And of course I should know more. First, I had a technical degree from a top