How highways make traffic worse

Expanding highways doesn't do what you think it does.

Big, expensive highway expansion projects are the source of a lot US transportation funding — but they aren't a silver bullet for congestion relief. In communities that were built for cars, solving traffic problems requires much more holistic problem-solving.

At 1:00, we show a bar graph of travel times on the Katy Freeway that was originally put together by City Observatory, which has covered the Katy Freeway expansion project at length:

This video was based in large part on research by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner:

For more reading on induced demand:

For Kyle Shelton's work on urbanism: