City Form, Economics and Culture by Pablo Guillen & Urša Komac

Author:Pablo Guillen & Urša Komac
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811557415
Publisher: Springer Singapore

8.1 The Logic of Congestion

So far, we have described a contemporary car-based city that, in America, is rooted and still fosters economic segregation, often correlated with race. It also generates large amounts of pollution and is energy inefficient. Perhaps most importantly we have argued that the car-based city limits the variety of goods and services on offer and, finally, generates a bland, repetitive landscape made to the scale and speed of the automobile. A sensible question at this point is whether such a city can expand and keep generating wealth in the long run. If so, as much as we dislike it, such model of growth would be here to stay. Would such a city be able to cope with congestion in the long run? Is building more roads and providing more parking a viable long-term strategy?

Many studies show how building more roads does not ease congestion in the long run. There is economic logic to that. Let’s consider a four-lane motorway going downtown from, say, the Eastern suburbs. The motorway is utterly congested in the rush hours so it can’t cope with more traffic. People have serious doubts about moving to the Eastern suburbs because of the traffic situation. Many residents avoid driving during the rush hour as much as they can. Some even catch a bus to the railway station. Even if buses and trains are rather slow, the public transport commute is about as long as driving for many people. Deliveries and other commercial traffic is scheduled in the off peak to avoid the traffic jam. Developers don’t want to invest there. Then two more lanes are added to the motorway. Congestion is busted. Traffic can now flow much better and a 1 h commute is now cut to a speedy 30 min drive. More people choose to drive, even during the rush hour. Children are driven to schools further away. Deliveries can now be scheduled reliably. Public transport patronage plummets and services are cut. Now families are suddenly attracted by the charms of the Eastern suburbs and the ease of the commute. Developers take note. Within a few years’ population grows in the East. Families have moved into their new houses in the Far Eastern suburbs. But with the increase of population congestion came. The six-lane motorway is congested in the rush hour. It now takes 1 h and 10 min to get from the Eastern suburbs to the city, and 1 h and 30 min from the Far Eastern suburbs if you are lucky.

The phenomenon described in our example is a pattern found by many studies, see Duranton and Turner (2011). In the same vein, the Lewis-Mogridge position observes that as more roads are build more traffic fills these roads and speed gains cease to exist in a matter of months, see Lewis (1977) and Modridge (1990). Whenever a speed gain is realised some other road of junction becomes more congested so the system as a whole stays pretty much where it was in terms of average speed in and congestion in the rush hour.

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