April 2025

Expanding Congested Highways: Revisiting “Induced Demand”

Robert W. Poole Jr. Director of Transportation Policy, Reason Foundation

I get tired of major media repeatedly publishing feature articles claiming that it’s futile to add capacity to urban expressways. Yet they keep appearing, not just in niche publications but in major media such as:

– “Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?” New York Times, January 6, 2023

– “Will America Ever Stop Building More Highways?” Washington Post, February 15, 2024.

With a new U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration publicly committed to highway-friendly reform, it’s time to re-examine claims that highway expansion is futile.

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