Adding more lanes to a congested highway literally never solves the problem of traffic jams because of a deeply frustrating economic concept known as induced demand; when city…

A closer look

Adding more lanes to a congested highway literally never solves the problem of traffic jams because of a deeply frustrating economic concept known as induced demand; when city planners expand a freeway to reduce commuting times, the temporary decrease in congestion simply encourages more people to drive instead of taking public transit, which immediately fills up the new lanes and brings traffic right back to a standstill; we have spent decades and billions of taxpayer dollars turning our cities into endless slabs of concrete parking lots just to learn that human beings will always exploit a newly opened lane of asphalt like locusts descending on a fresh crop; it is the definition of insanity, yet politicians keep aggressively cutting ribbons in front of brand new twelve-lane mega-highways while proudly ignoring the fact that everyone will still be stuck moving at three miles per hour by next Tuesday