David Owen, “Traffic Congestion

 This passage is adapted from David Owen, “Traffic Congestion 

Is Not an Environmental Problem” from The Conundrum. ©2011 by David Owen. 

 Building good transit isn’t a bad idea, but it can 

actually backfre if the new trains and buses merely clear 

space on highway lanes for those who would prefer to 

drive—a group that, historically, has included almost 

everyone with access to a car. To have environmental 

value, new transit has to replace and eliminate driving 

on a scale sufficient to cut energy consumption overall. 

Tat means that a new transit system has to be backed 

up by something that impels complementary reductions 

in car use—say, the physical elimination of traffic lanes 

or the conversion of existing roadways into bike or bus 

lanes, ideally in combination with higher fuel taxes, 

parking fees, and tolls. Needless to say, those ideas are 

not popular. But they’re necessary, because you can’t 

make people drive less, in the long run, by taking steps 

that make driving more pleasant, economical, and 

productive. 

 One of the few forces with a proven ability to slow 

the growth of suburban sprawl has been the ultimately 

fnite tolerance of commuters for long, annoying 

commutes. Tat tolerance has grown in recent decades, 

and not just in the United States, but it isn’t unlimited, 

and even people who don’t seem to mind spending half 

their day in a car eventually reach a point where, fnally, 

enough is enoughTat means that traffic congestion 

can have environmental value, since it lengthens 

commuting times and, by doing so, discourages the 

proliferation of still more energy-hungry subdivisions—

unless we made the congestion go away. If, in a mis-

guided effort to do something of environmental value, 

municipalities take steps that make long-distance car 

commuting faster or more convenient—by adding lanes, 

building bypasses, employing traffic-control measures 

that make it possible for existing roads to accommodate 

more cars with fewer delays, replacing tollbooths with 

radio-based systems that don’t require drivers even to 

slow down—we actually make the sprawl problem 

worse, by indirectly encouraging people to live still 

farther from their jobs, stores, schools, and doctors’ 

offices, and by forcing municipalities to further extend 

road networks, power grids, water linesand other civic 

infrastructure. If you cut commuting time by 10%, 

people who now drive ffy miles each way to work can 

justify moving fve miles farther out, because their travel 

time won’t change. Tis is how metropolitan areas 

metastasize. It’s the history of suburban expansion. 

 Traffic congestion isn’t an environmental problem; 

traffic is. Relieving congestion without doing anything 

to reduce the total volume of cars can only make the 

real problem worse. Highway engineers have known 

for a long time that building new car lanes reduces 

congestion only temporarily, because the new lanes 

foster additional driving—a phenomenon called 

induced traffic. Widening roads makes traffic move 

faster in the short term, but the improved conditions 

eventually attract additional drivers and entice current 

drivers to drive more, and congestion reappears,but 

with more cars—and that gets people thinking about 

widening roads again. Moving drivers out of cars and 

into other forms of transportation can have the same 

effect, if existing traffic lanes are kept in service: road 

space begets road use. 

 One of the arguments that cities inevitably make 

in promoting transit plans is that the new system, by 

relieving automobile congestion, will improve the lives 

of those who continue to drive. No one ever promotes a 

transit scheme by arguing that it would make traveling 

less convenient—even though, from an environmental 

perspective, inconvenient travel is a worthy goal.

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