Despite billions of dollars invested in highway expansions, Houston drivers continue to face severe traffic congestion. Research suggests that adding lanes to highways can actually worsen congestion due to 'induced demand', where drivers respond to increased capacity by driving more.
Drivers in Houston spend more time in traffic than almost anywhere else in the country. The average commuter spent nearly 70 hours in traffic in 2022, according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute — that’s almost two full work weeks. Over the past decade, the Texas Department of Transportation , or TxDOT, has committed $80 billion to fix congestion on highways in five Texas cities, including Houston and San Antonio. That’s roughly $9,500 per person.
So why is traffic still so bad? Adding lanes to highways doesn’t fix rush hour traffic. Research has repeatedly found that the number of cars on the road increases as capacity expands. The phenomenon known as “induced demand” was first articulated in 1962 by an economist named Anthony Downs who detailed the causes and concluded that in large metro areas it “is impossible to build expressways wide enough to carry rush-hour traffic at the speed and congestion levels normally considered optimal for such roads.” In short, he found, a bigger road can fit more cars, but won’t drive down commute times. Faced with a free-flowing road, drivers change their behavior, traveling more frequently or for longer distances — resulting in increased congestion. RELATED: I-45 rebuild that will remake Houston's downtown freeways has started. Track latest updates here In 2019, a team at the University of California at Davis found that in cities across the country, even when controlling for population growth, for every 1% increase in lane miles constructed, the total miles people drove also increased by 1%. Another study from the nonprofit Transportation for America found that between 1993 and 2017, the hundred largest urbanized areas in the United States spent more than $500 billion adding new freeways or expanding existing ones. In those same cities, congestion increased by 144%, significantly outpacing population growth. TxDOT calls this phenomenon latent demand — all the pent-up demand for driving that new roads accommodat
Traffic Congestion Induced Demand Road Expansions Houston Transportation
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