The association between congestion and affluence could lead some people to conclude that congestion isn’t bad for the economy. So congestion is certainly correlated with economic health, and found in vibrant places that offer more opportunity. More people are driving to work (both because there are more jobs and more people with the income to buy cars and gas), and more people have discretionary income to spend driving off to dinner, to cultural or sporting events, or just to visit friends across town. This relationship is sensible: In vibrant economies, people have more places to go. Youngstown, Ohio, and Flint, Michigan, do not. New York and San Francisco have terrible congestion. A list of the most congested urban areas in the country is a list of prosperity. In part the confusion arises because congestion is an affliction of affluence. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it can create some confusion. A typical congestion ranking, for example, might calculate the severity of congestion in LA by examining how often roads are congested to how often they are free-flowing (a comparison within the region), and ranking that delay alongside the delay faced by people elsewhere (a comparison across regions). Something to note about these narratives is that they often involve comparisons across regions as well as comparisons within regions.
The average driver loses X hours a year to traffic, results in Y gallons of wasted fuel, and congestion’s total cost to the economy is Z.” X, Y and Z, of course, are often eye-popping numbers. Traffic congestion continues to exact a huge toll on our region’s economic vitality and quality of life. How bad is traffic congestion for the economy?Ī typical news story about traffic congestion might start something like this: “Once again Los Angeles is one of the most congested regions in the United States. The important point for now is that if we choose to leave the roads unpriced, we are choosing to have congestion. That’s a separate argument (about which we have other thoughts). One can argue that in the name of fairness we should leave our roads free. The subway lets people who prefer not to drive avoid congestion, but it does not make the congestion go away). Other approaches, like building comprehensive mass transit, do not reduce congestion, if by “reduce congestion” we mean “make driving faster at busy times.” (A quick example: New York City has one of the most extensive transit systems on earth. This approach, known as congestion pricing, is often politically unpopular but has proven effective in the places that have tried it.
Understanding that congestion occurs because roads are free makes clear that the only way to reduce congestion is to charge a price to use the road. We choose to leave the road unpriced, however, and as a result we run out of it: congestion. That’s because we allocate vehicles and gasoline with prices - they get more expensive when more people want them. Everyone who uses the road also uses vehicles and gasoline, but we do not suffer shortages of those. We can also see this if we compare the roads to other aspects of driving. We can see the role of prices in congestion when we compare roads to other public infrastructure: We charge people to use water and heating oil and electricity, and as a result we rarely see these systems crash from overuse. We choose to leave our roads free despite them being very valuable, and as a result they get overused and congested. When goods are underpriced, they are prone to shortages - in general, it is the things we don’t charge for that become the things we run out of. Without it, nothing else about congestion makes sense. This fact is the central concept to understanding traffic congestion. Roads get congested because they are free to use. We offer three core ideas to keep in mind when covering congestion: Why do we have so much congestion? In part for this reason, congestion gets a tremendous amount of attention from elected officials, residents and news organization. Cities have other serious problems, of course, but few of these problems touch such a large share of city residents on a daily basis. Traffic congestion is a bane of urban life. Traffic Congestion: Three Big Questions, Three Short Answers