TIL The Katy Freeway in Houston, TX was expanded in 2008 to 26 lanes (one of the widest in the world) and 5 years later had longer peak travel times than before the expansion
TIL The Katy Freeway in Houston, TX was expanded in 2008 to 26 lanes (one of the widest in the world) and 5 years later had longer peak travel times than before the expansion
With billions of dollars available to improve transportation infrastructure, states have a chance to try new strategies for addressing congestion. But some habits are hard to break.
For critics of widening projects, the prime example of induced demand is the Katy Freeway in Houston, one of the widest highways in the world with 26 lanes.
Immediately after Katy’s last expansion, in 2008, the project was hailed as a success. But within five years, peak hour travel times on the freeway were longer than before the expansion.
Matt Turner, an economics professor at Brown University and co-author of the 2009 study on congestion, said adding lanes is a fine solution if the goal is to get more cars on the road. But most highway expansion projects, including those in progress in Texas, cite reducing traffic as a primary goal.
“If you keep adding lanes because you want to reduce traffic congestion, you have to be really determined not to learn from history,” Dr. Turner said.
This is because the extra lane allows demand to change. It is not congested so people feel ok building and moving to further out suburbs. This continues until demand has increased to cause delays.
Note that Houston and Paris have about the same population. Paris is 1/3 the size. They are actually removing a lane from their loop highway and planting trees, and turning another lane into busses only. Only considering transportation, I would much rather live in Paris.
Houston is commonly used as an example for what NOT to do, when it comes to civil planning and development.
I N D U C E D D E M A N D
Great for sidewalks, bike paths, and trains, but terrible for cars.
My only time in the Houston area, and visiting friends staying in Katy TX, and I learned how quickly I hated the traffic there. This makes sense
Just one more lane bro. I promise. It'll fix everything, I swear. Just one more lane bro.
If they had just built it with 52 lanes!
/s
It worked great at the start, but the Houston area population just kept exploding at unprecedented rates.
The Greater Houston area grew by 70% between 2000 and 2020 - largely on the West side. Of course a 30% capacity improvement couldn't keep up.
They missed it by one lane. They only needed one more. Lol
Too bad they never heard of Braess's paradox…
If you build it, they will come.... Or something
And yet we hear the argument that when it comes to cycle lanes the opposite is true, the more you add the less they are used.
America is just too beautiful to be on this earth.
The conclusions in the article are bizarre. The widening worked, and as the population increased, the congestion increased in those areas.
The solution is stop upping population density in population dense areas.
You just can't pack that many people in per square mile and make it work, regardless of if we are using cars or not.
