“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Pogo

It’s a strange world out there on the roads these days. On the one hand, it seems that everyone is concerned about increased traffic congestion and, on the other, they are concerned about increased speeding within their own communities. While it may seem that the two issues are diametrically different, they are not. They are part of the same problem and that problem really comes down to “us”.

Consider the fact that between 1985 and 1998 the number of vehicle miles traveled increased by 47% while the total lane miles of road increased by only 3%. To make matters worse, there are over 40 million more cars in service today than there were in 1985.

Households with three or more cars have jumped from 2.8 million in 1969 to over 18.9 million in 1998 while the number of trips per day per household has almost doubled in the same period. In total, the number of trips has gone from 87.2 million in 1969 to 229.7 million in 1998. The number of “person miles traveled” increased by 65% percent between 1969 and 1990 but went up by a staggering 47% between 1990 and 1995. Family and personal trips doubled in the 21 years between 1969 and 1990 and then soared by another 52% in just five years between 1990 and 1995.

The answer to many is as simple as it is obvious. We have many more vehicles, making many more trips and traveling many more miles on our roads. Thus, by logical extension, we need more roads.

However, perhaps before jumping on to the steamroller and laying down miles of new asphalt it would be wise to consider the warning in the words of H. L. Mencken when he said, "For every complex, difficult problem, there is a simple, easy solution... and it is wrong."

There are few instances where these words are more prophetic than when addressing the problems of congestion. We cannot build our way out of congestion.

Consider that for road construction to have kept pace with the increased demand between 1985 and 1998 that 1,815,000 miles (yes, that’s millions) of new roads would have been required nationwide. To put this into a smaller, more comprehensible scale, let’s consider Pennsylvania with its 119,000 miles of road. For the state to catch up to the average increase in road usage that has occurred since 1985 it would need to add nearly 56,000 miles of new roads.

When considered from this perspective, the easy answer no longer sounds quite as reasonable. From a purely financial point of view, the taxpayers could not afford such an undertaking. From a purely practical point of view, we are doing a pretty miserable job of maintaining the roads that we do have. It is of questionable intelligence to keep adding more roads to a network that is already crumbling because we lack the wherewithal to keep them in good repair. Lastly, it would be wise to consider the environmental impacts that constructing 1.8 million miles of road might have. While a faster trip to the mall may be appreciated by some, we suspect that others would place an equal value on access to clean air and water.

We strongly suspect that some readers will suggest that linking road growth to the increase in usage in the manner that we have done is merely a manipulation of statistics. To a degree, they are right. The impact of increased usage is not necessarily linear, but rather it is conditional.

Hopefully, those same readers will recognize that the benefits of new road construction also are not linear and are likewise conditional. Unfortunately, accepting that reasoning wrecks havoc with the simplified argument that we have more vehicles, thus, we need more roads.

The point really is not to claim that a linear relationship exists but rather to illustrate the extreme severity of the problem and that should have been perfectly clear to everyone. We have a mess on our hands and it is going to get an awful lot worse unless viable solutions are implemented.

Elusive Solutions

If you recall, we started out this section with a famous quote from Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” In this case, we really are our own worst enemy.

The statistics above came from the US Census Bureau in their section Land Transportation. This link will provided access to the referenced document in a PDF format and we would urge you to take a look the data on page 15 of 32 (their Page 631). If you spend a couple of minutes studying the raw numbers and considering the trends, it is almost impossible to come to any other conclusion than we are simply driving too much.

The congestion we face on a daily basis is more a result of our own driving patterns than it is a failure of our infrastructure. We are creating the congestion that we sit in and then have the audacity to complain about it. We want what we want, when we want it and get angry if there is anything that makes getting what we want inconvenient. It seems to be the American way.

It is time for a reality check because no matter how one defends it, we are the cause of the problem. We make our decisions based on our desires. People are driving more often and driving further to acquire something that they consider to be important.

Let’s say that a person drives 30 miles to work because they want to live in a particular community. That’s fine but they shouldn’t complain about their travel times and congestion because they are intrinsically part of the problem. In addition, they have an alternative that would eliminate the problem for themselves and lessen it for everyone else. That is, they can move closer to their place of employment.

They may not want to; but the rejection of that alternative totally changes the argument. Now it becomes I want to live where I want and get to wherever I want without being inconvenienced. Sorry to say, that’s not going to happen. If you don’t want congestion, don’t create it by your life decisions.

Unfortunately, you probably won’t find one politician that would be willing to say that a major part of the answer to our problems of congestion is that people need to drive less. It is a quick way to get “unelected”. But the reality is that if people drove 10% less we would reduce congestion enormously because congestion is non-linear.

This is an incredibly important concept when discussing traffic congestion and one that is dealt with in detail in other parts of the Transportation section. For now, we will try to clarify it with a simplistic example.

If a road has a capacity of 2,000 vehicles per hour (vph), that traffic will flow acceptably at 2,000 vph but will probably be a real mess if there are 2,200 vph. Think about how one car going 35 mph on a 65 mph expressway backs everything up and you will understand that even this small percentage increase over capacity can cause significant delays. However, to correct the problem you don’t need to get all 2,200 vehicles off the road but rather you only need to reduce them by 200 to get the traffic moving along nicely.

Obviously, driving less is not the only answer but it is the major component to reducing congestion. Changes in our driving habits need to be combined with innovative technologies such as roundabouts to improve the capacities of our existing roads. When necessary, we will need to build new roads but we have to do so with a level of intelligence and forethought that has been lacking in the past.