Still stuck in traffic : coping with peak-hour traffic congestion

473 Pages·2004·1.579 MB·English

by  Anthony Downs

DOWNS
A completely revised and expanded edition STILL STUCK
of the landmark book, Stuck in Traffic
S in TR AFFIC
C
T
ongested roads waste commuters’time, cost them money, and degrade the
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environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem L
in their communities—and it only seems to be getting worse. L
In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic, Anthony
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Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing
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on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners,
he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly U
simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended
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consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there
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might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-
use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher
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gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the n coping with peak-hour
least palatable politically.
traffic congestion
Still Stuck in Traffic contains new material on the causes of congestion, its dynamics, T
and its relative incidence in various parts of the country. In clear and realistic terms, R
Downs seeks to explore why traffic congestion has become part of modern American
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life and how it can be kept under control.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR F
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Anthony Downsis a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings
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Institution. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including New Visions
for Metropolitan America (1994) and Growth Management and Affordable Housing: ANTHONY DOWNS
Do They Conflict? (2004).
brookings institution press
Washington, D.C.
www.brookings.edu
Cover design by Beth Schlenoff BROOKINGS
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STILL STUCK
in TRAFFIC
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JAMES A. JOHNSON METRO SERIES
The Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brook-
ings Institution is integrating research and practical experi-
ence into a policy agenda for cities and metropolitan areas.
By bringing fresh analyses and policy ideas to the public
debate, the center hopes to inform key decisionmakers and
civic leaders in ways that will spur meaningful change in our
nation’s communities.
As part of this effort, the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy has estab-
lished the James A. Johnson Metro Series to introduce new perspectives and pol-
icy thinking on current issues and attempt to lay the foundation for longer-term
policy reforms. The series examines traditional urban issues, such as neighbor-
hood assets and central city competitiveness, as well as larger metropolitan con-
cerns, such as regional growth, development, and employment patterns. The
James A. Johnson Metro Series consists of concise studies and collections of
essays designed to appeal to a broad audience. While these studies are formally
reviewed, some are not verified like other research publications. As with all
publications, the judgments, conclusions, and recommendations presented in the
studies are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to the
trustees, officers, or other staff members of the Institution.
Also available in this series:
Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis
Robert E. Lang
Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence
Jens Ludwig and Philip J. Cook, editors
Growth and Convergence in Metropolitan America
Janet Rothenberg Pack
Growth Management and Affordable Housing: Do They Conflict?
Anthony Downs, editor
Laws of the Landscape: How Policies Shape Cities in Europe and America
Pietro S. Nivola
Low-Income Homeownership: Examining the Unexamined Goal
Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky, editors
Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000
Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang, editors
Reflections on Regionalism
Bruce J. Katz, editor
Savings for the Poor: The Hidden Benefits of Electronic Banking
Michael A. Stegman
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STILL STUCK
in TRAFFIC
COPING WITH PEAK-HOUR
TRAFFIC CONGESTION
ANTHONY DOWNS
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Washington,D.C.
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Copyright © 2004
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
www.brookings.edu
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Downs, Anthony.
Still stuck in traffic: coping with peak-hour traffic congestion / Anthony Downs
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of Stuck in traffic. 1992.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8157-1929-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Traffic congestion—United States. 2. Traffic flow—United States. 3. Land use,
Urban—United States. I. Downs, Anthony. Stuck in traffic. II. Title.
HE355.3.C64D69 2004
388.4'13142'0973—dc22 2004004190
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials: ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Typeset in Sabon
Composition by Betsy Kulamer
Washington, D.C.
Printed by R. R. Donnelley
Harrisonburg, Virginia
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1
Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction 1
2 The Benefits of Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion 5
3 How Bad Is Traffic Congestion? 14
4 Causes of Recent Increases in Peak-Hour Traffic
Congestion 37
5 Incidents and Accidents as Causes of Congestion 61
6 Strategies for Reducing Congestion and Four Basic
Principles of Traffic 76
7 Reducing Incident-Caused Congestion 91
8 Increasing Road-Carrying Capacity 101
9 Creating More Public Transit Capacity 117
10 Peak-Hour and Other Road Pricing 152
11 Demand-Side Behavioral Tactics 180
12 Remedies That Increase Densities 200
v
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vi CONTENTS
13 Changing the Jobs-Housing Balance 228
14 Concentrating Jobs in Large Clusters 245
15 Local Growth Management Policies 258
16 Traffic Congestion around the World 272
17 Regional Anticongestion Policies 298
18 Summary and Conclusions 321
Appendixes
A The Dynamics of Traffic Congestion 355
B Graphic Analysis of Peak-Hour Road Pricing 368
C Translating Gross Residential Densities into Net Residential Densities 371
D A Spatial Model for Simulating Changes 375
E Clustering High-Density Housing Near Transit Stops 390
Notes 403
Index 443
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1
CHAPTER
Foreword
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raffic congestion has almost surpassed bad weather as a
malady that is universally discussed but rarely improved
through public policies. Congestion now slows down virtu-
ally every U.S. metropolitan area. It also lasts longer and
affects more of the transportation network than ever
before. This constantly intensifying nature of congestion is
extremely frustrating to the millions of citizens who daily
endure it. They keep asking, “Why doesn’t somebody do
something about this misery?”
The bad news for disgruntled commuters, families, and
businesses is that traffic congestion is a problem that
requires extremely complex and iterative solutions. Many
of the nation’s frequent calls for more money and increased
investment in transportation focus directly on the conges-
tion crisis with “solutions” that rely on expanding capacity
by building more and bigger roads, typically on the subur-
ban and exurban fringe. Such proposals fail to recognize
what is responsible for these problems in the first place.
Traffic congestion results from many factors and varies
greatly from place to place. In densely settled cities like
New York and San Francisco, traffic congestion exists
because there are many vehicles moving about in a gener-
vii
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viii FOREWORD
ally confined area. In other metropolitan areas—and particularly in the
suburbs—congestion results from low-density settlement patterns,
employment decentralization, shifting consumption patterns, and mar-
ket restructuring. In rural areas, seasonal tourist traffic on once-bucolic
country roads may generate congestion.
But more generally, worsening traffic congestion stems from the way
modern metropolitan economies and societies are organized. Americans
generate congestion because they place the pursuit of other goals above
minimizing the time they spend moving around on the ground. Those
other goals include having most people work during the same hours
each day so they can efficiently interact with one another, giving people
many choices of where to live and work, having most students attend
classes during the same hours to optimize the use of teachers’ services,
and enabling some people to choose whether they travel by car, bus, or
train—although, in reality, very few really possess options other than
the car.
The upshot is inescapable: pursuing all those goals simultaneously
requires a large segment of the nation’s population to try to travel dur-
ing the same few hours each day—the “peak” or “rush” hours. This
overloads much of the nation’s transportation network during this time,
forcing people to wait in line for their turn to reach their destinations.
However, as this book proves, we cannot avoid such delays by building
enough roads or rails to handle all those movers at the same time, or by
setting up electronic connections for telecommuting, or even by install-
ing tolls on all main roads during peak hours. As a result, we allocate
auto transportation on a first-come, first-served basis. People have to
wait in line, which is essentially what congestion is.
Although governments may never be able to eliminate road conges-
tion, there are several ways cities, states, and metropolitan areas can
move to curb its increase. Such approaches include operational improve-
ments such as clearing accidents faster, land use improvements such as
permitting appropriately sited high-density development, and market
mechanisms like the pricing experiment currently under way in Lon-
don’s central business district.
In this book, Anthony Downs reveals the fundamental nature of
peak-hour metropolitan traffic congestion and analyzes its causes—not
only in America but in urban areas all over the world. He collects all of
the policies that have been proposed to remedy this mobility problem
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FOREWORD ix
and then analyzes how each might at least help slow down the rate at
which congestion will get worse.
This volume is a greatly expanded and updated revision of his earlier
analysis, Stuck in Traffic, published in 1992. Downs has deepened his
earlier theoretical analysis of traffic congestion, added chapters on the
role of accidents and incidents in generating congestion, examined con-
gestion around the world as well as in America, and analyzed new tac-
tics proposed to reduce it. Among other things, this book clearly illus-
trates why this nation has to get beyond the transportation-only
solutions of the past fifty years in order to deal with congestion. As
Downs clearly illustrates, there are no quick fixes.
Perhaps Yogi Berra said it best: “If you keep doing what you always
did, you’ll always get what you always got.” In this book Anthony
Downs shows us how a new, pragmatic, and realistic set of improve-
ments can help address the apparent hopelessness of one of this nation’s
most daunting metropolitan challenges.
Bruce Katz
Vice President and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Director, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy