Traffic jams, the bane of modern living, lead to increased commute time, pollution from idling vehicles, and flared tempers. The knee-jerk solution is to build wider roads. While that may seem like a logical solution to the problem, we are just kicking the can down the road where it becomes a bigger problem. I posit that we shouldn't widen our roads anymore.
I know it sounds counterintuitive, but bear with me a little.
Building wider roads does reduce traffic congestion in the immediate moment. But there is a knock-on effect that goes unnoticed – it incentivizes people to buy more cars.
Cars are a fantastic way to commute. It’s like taking your room with you. You can eat in it, smoke in it, listen to your choice of music in it, and take calls in it. It protects you from the heat, the rain, and the snow. What’s not to like about cars?
Sadly, cars also pollute, and not just from the fuel they use. According to World Steel Association estimates, making one car takes about 900 kg of steel. In comparison, a bicycle uses almost no iron ore, plastic, rubber, or glass.
They also take up a lot of space. A car takes up a 15x6 feet space, on the road, in parking lots, and at your home.
If we intend to leave behind a world that can support life without recourse to masks and other breathing apparatus, we must reduce cars - cars in general not just cars that run on fossil fuels.
The only people actually benefiting from these wide and smooth roads are those in the automobile industry. The rest of us are just committing suicide.
If we want people to stop buying and using cars, we must change the incentives. Roads are a public space and there must be a cost when one person takes up the space that could be used by multiple people. One solution could be to increase fuel prices, but that has knock-on effects on other areas we don't want to harm. That leaves us with the option to tax vehicles. But that solution favors the rich 1% over the common person. The effective message would be that roads are built for the convenience of a few.
There is, however, a solution that lets us keep the price of fuel and vehicles down (read as affordable) while incentivizing people to use them less - making users of private vehicles pay with their time. Every time we spend money to widen a road, that is money that could have been spent to improve public transportation and infrastructure. If we stop building infrastructure for cars, it will lead to longer traffic jams and increased pollution levels in the short term. But as people look to reduce their commute time or the time spent sitting in traffic jams, these will ease up. We will actually end up with fewer jams and better air quality.
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