Let’s solve traffic jams by creating more!

Congress is close to approving a huge transportation bill, which in its original form allocated $300 billion to roads but only $75 billion to transit. According to the article, “House Transportation Committee spokeman Steve Hansen… cited the $70 billion that is ‘wasted each year due solely to traffic congestion and the waste of more than 5.7 billion gallons of gas each year by commuters sitting idle in traffic jams.’”

So… the solution to this is to spend money on widening roads? When will we learn that widening roads doesn’t cut traffic, it increases it? The $70 billion won’t go away just because you widen roads. It will simply encourage even more sprawl.

Let’s try putting $300 billion towards transit so people don’t have to buy cars in the first place and see what happens.