Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion

Congested roads waste commuters' time, cost them money, and degrade the environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem in their communities—and it only seems to be getting worse. In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic, Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners, he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the least palatable politically. St ill Stuck in Traffic contains new material on the causes of congestion, its dynamics, and its relative incidence in various parts of the country. In clear and realistic terms, Downs seeks to explore why traffic congestion has become part of modern American life and how it can be kept under control.

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Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion

Congested roads waste commuters' time, cost them money, and degrade the environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem in their communities—and it only seems to be getting worse. In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic, Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners, he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the least palatable politically. St ill Stuck in Traffic contains new material on the causes of congestion, its dynamics, and its relative incidence in various parts of the country. In clear and realistic terms, Downs seeks to explore why traffic congestion has become part of modern American life and how it can be kept under control.

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Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion

Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion

by Anthony Downs
Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion

Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion

by Anthony Downs

eBook

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Overview

Congested roads waste commuters' time, cost them money, and degrade the environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem in their communities—and it only seems to be getting worse. In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic, Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners, he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the least palatable politically. St ill Stuck in Traffic contains new material on the causes of congestion, its dynamics, and its relative incidence in various parts of the country. In clear and realistic terms, Downs seeks to explore why traffic congestion has become part of modern American life and how it can be kept under control.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780815796558
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Publication date: 06/22/2005
Series: James A. Johnson Metro Series
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 472
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Anthony Downs is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. His specialties are housing, real estate, real estate finance, metropolitan planning, demographics, and transportation. His books include New Visions for Metropolitan America (Brookings/Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 1994), and Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion (Brookings, 2004).

Table of Contents

Forewordvii
Acknowledgmentsxi
1Introduction1
2The Benefits of Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion5
3How Bad Is Traffic Congestion?14
4Causes of Recent Increases in Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion37
5Incidents and Accidents as Causes of Congestion61
6Strategies for Reducing Congestion and Four Basic Principles of Traffic76
7Reducing Incident-Caused Congestion91
8Increasing Road-Carrying Capacity101
9Creating More Public Transit Capacity117
10Peak-Hour and Other Road Pricing152
11Demand-Side Behavioral Tactics180
12Remedies That Increase Densities200
13Changing the Jobs-Housing Balance228
14Concentrating Jobs in Large Clusters245
15Local Growth Management Policies258
16Traffic Congestion around the World272
17Regional Anticongestion Policies298
18Summary and Conclusions321
Appendixes
AThe Dynamics of Traffic Congestion355
BGraphic Analysis of Peak-Hour Road Pricing368
CTranslating Gross Residential Densities into Net Residential Densities371
DA Spatial Model for Simulating Changes375
EClustering High-Density Housing Near Transit Stops390
Notes403
Index443
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