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The Truth about Traffic
The underlying causes of congestion are far more complicated than many traditional interests have historically been willing to admit. The ability of available roadway space - the most traditional method of measuring supply or capacity as expressed in lane-miles - to meet traffic demand as measured in vehicle miles traveled, is just one of a set of several underlying factors that research has found contribute to traffic congestion. From this research and from a growing body of experience in both the United States and overseas, it is apparent that traffic congestion is a symptom of a much larger problem, a problem that includes:
- The Lack of Affordable Housing
The lack of affordable and mixed-income housing near employment centers, and the imbalance between jobs and housing, creates the notorious two-hour commutes between places like the Central Valley and the Silicon Valley or Lancaster and Los Angeles. California is now home to seven of the ten least affordable housing markets in the country.
- Sprawling Patterns of New Growth
Poorly planned sprawling development and land use patterns and zoning codes that separate uses further and further apart require people to travel longer distances. Many short trips that until recently had been made by walking from home to school, between commercial establishments, from work to lunch, are now made by vehicle trips that often occur at similar times and lead to peak hour congestion around intersections and along freeways. Indeed, recent research by the U.S. Department of Transportation found that only 13 percent of the increase in driving is attributable to population growth. The remainder has been a result of a steady growth in the number of trips taken and the length of trips, both primarily products of low-density suburban development that requires ever greater levels of dependency on driving.
To make matters worse, not only does the typical suburban development model characterized by low-density cul-de-sacs, wide, high-speed arterials, and massive
intersections make traffic management difficult, it also makes it less cost-effective for transit to serve scattered destinations and makes walking or bicycling both inconvenient and dangerous.
- Changes in Home to School Travel
Whereas more than half of all kids walked or bicycled to school in the 1950s, that number has now fallen below 10 percent as streets have become more dangerous due to traffic. Combined with the loss of school bus service, the resulting trend has been an overwhelming increase in parents driving their children to school, clogging local roadways during critical peak hours. An estimated 20-25 percent of rush hour traffic on local streets and roads is now attributable to the school commute.
- Fiscal Incentives Promoting Sprawl
Local governments increasingly rely on "big box" commercial developments to generate local revenues through increased sales taxes. Such commercial highway strip development has proven to be incredibly inefficient from the perspective of traffic flow, generating many peak hour trips that tie up intersections for hours at a time. Numerous short vehicle trips between retail stores, services, and fast food outlets are now replacing what used to be walking trips between shops on smaller neighborhood streets and even more recently were walking trips made between stores inside shopping malls.
Furthermore, fiscal incentives favoring commercial development over residential due to the promise of sales tax revenues has created a vast imbalance between jobs and housing in communities throughout California, requiring long distance commutes between the workplace, stores, other errands and home.
- Economic Disincentives For Greater Efficiency
The skewed pricing signals given to travelers appear to make highway travel, even at the most congested periods of the day, entirely free, while public transit and commuter rail are often perceived as too expensive. While tolls and peak hour congestion pricing are politically unpopular and must be handled carefully to ensure social equity, their absence as a traffic demand management tool greatly exacerbates roadway congestion problems.
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