Is widening roads just making traffic worse?
My daily commute has gotten 15 minutes longer every year for the past five years, and I'm starting to think that building more roads just encourages more people to drive—it's a classic induced demand problem. In my city, they widened the main highway last year, and traffic congestion actually got worse within six months, which blew my mind. But I also can't ignore that my neighbor works a night shift and needs his car because buses don't run after midnight, so public transit isn't a one-size-fits-all answer either. Should we keep investing in road expansion, or is that just throwing money at a problem we've already proven we can't pave our way out of?