{"id":956257,"date":"2026-05-13T04:15:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/956257\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T04:15:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:15:22","slug":"opinion-its-time-to-rethink-our-congestion-obsession-streetsblog-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/956257\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: It’s Time to Rethink Our Congestion Obsession \u2014 Streetsblog USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Department of Transportation launched a\u00a0\u201cFreedom to Drive\u201d initiative<\/a>\u00a0last month that aims to \u201ctackle the nation\u2019s growing congestion problem.\u201d The belief that congestion is a problem is not new. People have been complaining about traffic congestion for more than a century, from when cars first clogged city streets. They are complaining about it still, as in a recent\u00a0New York Times article<\/a>\u00a0describing traffic in Los Angeles as \u201csoul-crushing.\u201d <\/p>\n

It is not surprising, given all the complaining, that congestion remains the primary focus of transportation policy in the United States.\u00a0But why all this obsession with congestion?<\/p>\n

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Congestion is unquestionably bad for us. It causes stress and negatively affects mental well-being. By adding to travel time, congestion increases exposure to potential injuries and fatalities as well as air pollutants for drivers and passengers. The simple act of sitting in a car is not good for one\u2019s health. Compounding these problems, time stuck in traffic is time that one could otherwise spend in activities healthy for mind and body.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Psychology might also explain our hatred of traffic. Because a driver stuck in traffic cannot go as fast as they think they should be able to, a twenty-minute trip with traffic feels worse than a twenty-minute trip without traffic. The inability to move means that drivers have lost not just time but autonomy, their ability to act independently of external forces. Being trapped in a traffic jam might trigger feelings akin to claustrophobia. All these effects are possibly greater when one does not anticipate the congestion.<\/p>\n

From a policy standpoint, we villainize congestion for its impacts on the economy. The annual\u00a0Urban Mobility Report<\/a>, published by the Texas Transportation Institute, estimates that \u201cAmericans lost an average of 63 hours sitting in traffic in 2024\u201d and converts this into monetary impacts of $269 billion annually. <\/p>\n

In promoting its new initiative, US DOT even calls congestion a \u201cdrain on American families and our economy.\u201d Time is money, after all.<\/p>\n

According to this line of thought, efficiency depends on speed, and economic growth depends on minimizing delays. This belief explains a century of highway expansions sold to the public as solutions to the congestion problem and essential for the economy. <\/p>\n

But these projects have succeeded in\u00a0reducing congestion only in the short-term<\/a>\u00a0despite consuming vast sums of public funding. The new federal initiative, which encourages states to expand their highways, are likely to be as ineffective as the old ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for some new thinking.<\/p>\n

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We can start by embracing the one proven strategy for reducing congestion: congestion pricing. <\/p>\n

Congestion pricing is a way of prioritizing driving trips: if driving is important enough for a given trip, the driver will pay; if not, the driver will switch to another mode or reschedule or forgo the trip. This sorting results in more efficient use of the roadway system by ensuring that it serves the driving trips with the highest value to drivers at peak hours. <\/p>\n

We can address the equity concerns this pay-to-drive strategy raises by using the toll revenues to improve transit and other driving alternatives and to subsidize tolls for low-income workers who need to drive. A year of congestion pricing in New York shows\u00a0it can work.<\/a><\/p>\n

We can think about congestion not as a phenomenon in need of reduction but rather as an experience that should be optional. Congestion becomes optional if we provide good alternatives to driving. <\/p>\n

This would require a shift in funding away from highway expansion projects that have at best a short-term effect on congestion to alternatives such as transit, biking, and walking that give people a long-term way to avoid it. It would also require changes in land use patterns to improve the viability of these alternatives and that would, as a bonus, enable shorter driving trips. We would also need to make housing more affordable in these places, and one way to do that is to waste less land on roads and parking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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We could also reconsider our definition of congestion. <\/p>\n

Congestion is measured relative to \u201cfree-flow\u201d speed, the speed at which one can drive in light traffic conditions, usually around 70 mph on highways. An average speed less than that produces a \u201cdelay\u201d \u2014 defined as the difference between the travel time at the free-flow speed and the travel time at the actual speed given roadway conditions.<\/p>\n

But this is an entirely subjective standard, and it is also an unrealistic expectation, as experience has proven time and time again. By simply resetting our expectations to lower speeds, by reconciling ourselves to having to spend a bit more time getting places, we lessen the congestion problem by definition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After all, time isn\u2019t the only way to think about the efficiency of the system. The congestion problem stems in part from the fact that cars are a spatially inefficient way to move people: each car requires considerable roadway and parking space but carries\u00a0less than 1.5 people on average in the US.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

From a\u00a0space\u00a0efficiency standpoint, it would make sense to devote more road space to modes such as transit, biking, and walking that consume far less space per person moved. Contrary to the backlash against bike lanes in cities like\u00a0Toronto<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Washington, DC<\/a>, studies show that\u00a0taking space away from cars does not generally increase congestion<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Recalibrating our fear of the economic impacts of congestion would also help. <\/p>\n

Although decision-makers justify highway expansions on the basis that congestion is an economic drain, research suggests that\u00a0congestion has little impact on economic growth<\/a>. This is in part because congestion is to some extent self-correcting: when congestion gets bad enough, people adjust their choices to cope with it. <\/p>\n

It is also helpful to recognize that congestion, as history shows, is a fact of life in vibrant urban centers with thriving economies. The entire world experienced this truth in reverse during the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

All of which is to say that maybe we shouldn\u2019t be quite as obsessed with congestion as we are. Thinking differently about congestion would open the door to more effective strategies for addressing it while creating space for increased attention to other pressing problems \u2014like safety. <\/p>\n

The single-mindedness fostered by our congestion obsession has been counterproductive. Approaching the problem with a more expansive, more equanimous frame of mind might just get us to a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US Department of Transportation launched a\u00a0\u201cFreedom to Drive\u201d initiative\u00a0last month that aims to \u201ctackle the nation\u2019s growing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[210563,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-956257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-promoted","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-us","11":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116565334000090962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}