Its too bad that the article could have provided the first 10 or 20 in the list, or at least link to the list, rather than telling us #'s 1,3,6,8,11,12,14,15,29 and 47.
Also it would be nice to see the list ranked directly by how bad traffic is rather than just the main ranking which looks at both the severity of traffic and the availability and use of public transit.
One of the reasons that road-building shows disappointing results, according to the STPP analysis, is that adding road capacity doesn't just meet the current travel demand, it actually spurs additional driving.
If a resource is scarce, and then you provide more of it, you might get more use. Its not so much that building creates more people that would like to drive as it provides supply to meet the previously unsatisfied hidden demand. You can make an analogy to a country where bread is in tight supply. People line up for bread. Provide more bread at more locations and you have shorter lines. You also get more consumption of bread. The fact that demand increases when people actually have a chance to get their demand satisfied at a reasonable cost (in time and/or money) isn't much of an argument for not increasing supply. |
