Traffic is so bad, why don’t we build more roads to deal with it? Since the 1940s, city planners have known (and often ignored) one counterintuitive rule: more roads means more congestion.
But! It’s the road-building that I’m writing about today. Moses built many bridges and roads with the goal of alleviating congestion in New York. However, every time a new bridge was built, traffic did not improve. Instead, people who normally wouldn’t drive switched from public transport to cars. People who wouldn’t normally make the trip decided that now it was worth it. More roads = more traffic.
Now, the fact that people were observing this back in the 1940s doesn’t change the fact that people keep insisting that more roads will solve traffic problems. And I understand why: it makes intuitive sense. It’s just mostly wrong. The technical term for this is “induced demand” – as in, by building roads you’re inducing more demand for roads.
One final fun fact: Robert Moses didn’t have a driver’s licence.
One Reply to “The congestion paradox”