Road design, transportation and walkability

[ijmorlan]

Also more cars will be induced to take the highway.

And in case anybody is still suspicious of this concept of induced demand, it’s just an example of perfectly respectable ECON 101 concepts. If you have a service and you make it better and cheaper, then ceteris paribus more people will use it.

A faster highway (both due to being designed for and legally allowing higher speeds, and due to having more spare capacity than the predecessor road, at least at first) is both a better service and cheaper to use (not price, but the overall cost of the road to the user, which includes time spent).

So it’s not the slightest bit surprising that expanded roads usually lead to more traffic.

This doesn’t mean it’s never appropriate to expand roads (or any transportation service), but it does mean that any argument that a new highway will “reduce congestion” is usually naive.