A new working paper compares the values of ways to reduce traffic congestion.
We all like to get good value for our money. When we buy peanut butter
or a blender, we compare prices and ingredients to make sure we’re getting
the best possible product for our budget. So it may be surprising to learn
that we haven’t always been so savvy about how we invest in
transportation congestion relief solutions. With congestion at an all-time high, and money to spend
on decreasing it at an all-time low, it is especially important that we do some
serious comparison shopping for a congestion-relief solution.
For the last half century, we’ve thrown billions of dollars toward
adding capacity on our highways and streets with the expectation that it finally
would get us out of traffic jams. But in 2003, congestion still cost the Chicago
region nearly $4.3 billion and endless hours of our lives. Common sense would
suggest that we might not be investing our precious tax dollars in the best
solution.
A recent working paper from the AEI-Brookings Joint
Center for Regulatory Studies, “The Effect of Government Highway Spending on
Road Users’ Congestion Costs,” confirms our suspicions. The authors have found that, on average, one dollar of
highway spending in a given year reduces the congestion costs to
road users by only 11 cents in that year.
Even if highway spending explicitly attempted to reduce congestion
by targeting expenditures to those states whose urbanized areas experience
the greatest travel delays, and to those stretches of road where spending is
most effective at reducing congestion, the congestion cost savings from one dollar
of highway spending in a given year would still only amount to a modest 25
cents in that year.
The study points to the phenomenon of “induced demand”
to explain why trying to solve congestion by adding more lanes for people
to drive on or allowing them to drive faster only leads to more
traffic jams. This phenomenon also is known as, “if you build it, they
will come” – eschewing transit, alternate routes, and off-peak travel times for the "new
and improved" road. A road widening here, a faster traffic light there may
very well simply attract more people to drive on a given road, or push the
bottleneck to a connecting road or intersection; fixing a new version of the
same problem inevitably costs even more money.
As the state begins serious discussions about the content of the next state
capital program, and the Regional Planning Board begins updating the 2030
Regional Transportation Plan, we should all be demanding the best value for our
tax dollars to reduce congestion in the region. If we don’t choose wisely now,
it may very well end up costing us even more money and wasted time.
Click here to view “The Effect of Government Highway Spending on Road
Users’ Congestion
Costs.”