Everyone agrees that traffic congestion is awful and should be minimized. Right?

Perhaps not.

In my opinion, it is a serious strategic blunder for sprawl-busters and other community and environmental advocates to oppose traffic congestion. The fact that there is a national consensus that congestion is bad shows that the sprawl and highway lobby have achieved an incredible public relations victory.

By unintentionally joining promoters of sprawl and highways by fighting congestion, environmentalists and smart growth advocates are indirectly promoting wider highways and other road capacity increases -- not to mention supporting the thousands of desperate, ruinous tools being used to "make cars happy."

Wider highways are promoted because they are the default "solution" we use to fight congestion.

Communities with free-flowing traffic and big roads provide high-octane fuel for suburban sprawl, environmental destruction, and the loss of transportation and lifestyle choice.

What are the results of traffic congestion? Is it really the unmitigated enemy of humanity?

Let's consider what traffic congestion does to a community:

1. Congestion is a powerful disincentive for suburban sprawl -- sprawl that steamrolls outlying natural areas. With congestion, the market for development in outlying areas withers. Without congestion, such sprawl markets blossom cancerously.

2. Congestion leads to a regional reduction in air pollution and fuel consumption (because "low-value" car trips are reduced).

3. Congestion leads to a reduction in average motor vehicle speeds (higher average speeds promote sprawl and a downwardly-spiraling quality of life, and also creates more severe car crashes).

4. Congestion creates a more healthy retail and residential environment in the core area of a community (because infill development, mixed use, and higher densities are more likely).

5. Congestion leads to strong political pressure to have elected officials create a quality transit, bicycle, and walking system. This is because large numbers of citizens become enraged by the congestion and demand that their officials do something -- ANYTHING -- to alleviate it. And communities soon find that it is unaffordable to continue to ruin themselves by widening roads.

6. Congestion promotes infill development, mixed use and higher residential densities, because a large number of citizens increasingly desire to live closer to their jobs, their schools, their shopping and their recreation as an important way to avoid or minimize travel congestion. This phenomenon helps explain why housing is so much more expensive in the downtowns of congested, attractive cities, and why communities that have built large, high-speed, free flowing roads have so much sprawl, and single-use, low-density development.

7. Congestion increases the use of public transit, because for many, transit is a more attractive form of travel than driving a car when traffic is congested -- particularly when the transit system is able to by-pass the congestion.

Congestion is also a sign of a healthy community that has resisted the ruinous temptation to build its way out of congestion with monster roads. It is only dead, stagnant, dying cities and downtowns that do not have congestion.

Note that I do not necessarily encourage congestion in and of itself. As any economist would point out, the most efficient, effective way to ease congestion is to charge fees (i.e., tolls) for use of the road -- particularly during rush hour. But because American motorists have been spoiled for so many decades by motorist welfare subsidies, we have come to expect that free roads are our birthright and therefore that any suggestion to charge fees for use of roads would be furiously opposed.

Given this condition, we are left with a "second best" option for discouraging the "low-value" car trips that crowd our roads (for example, driving across town on a major road during rush hour to, say, rent a video). And that option is congestion -- a condition that does not impose a financial tax or fee on driving, but does impose a time tax or fee.

Does this mean that we must resign ourselves to the aggravation of being "stuck in traffic"?

No.

It simply means that we must engage in the struggle to restore transportation and housing choices in our communities. We must create travel options so that those of us unwilling to tolerate the congestion can opt to use transit, a bicycle, or a sidewalk to avoid the congestion. A community where we have the choice to live in a location that is close enough to our daily destinations so that we can reduce our need for being dependent on car travel.

So why do we all oppose congestion? Are we our own worst enemies?

It is extremely naive to think that successful transit, bicycle and walking systems will noticeably reduce congestion. It only takes a very small number of cars to congest a road, and since there will always be a need by a number of community residents to use a car for travel (particularly when car travel is so strongly enabled and subsidized), a growing community will always see its roads congested if it is a healthy, attractive place. The "triple convergence" assures this, as road space that is freed up when a person opts to walk, use the bus, or ride a bike will quickly be used up by other motorists who converge on that newly-created space by being attracted to the road, being attracted to that rush hour time, or being attracted to traveling by car.

Smart growth advocates and environmentalists must start looking upon congestion as a friend. Otherwise, they unintentionally ally themselves with the sprawl lobby agenda. They play right into the hands of their ideological enemies.

Indeed, traffic congestion is a sign of a healthy community. A sign that a community has such attractive features that a great many people want to be there. Because it takes so few cars to congest a street, a lack of congestion during popular hours indicates a serious community dysfunction. In fact, to paraphrase Robert Cole, anyplace worth its salt has a congestion "problem."

Note that "libertarians" or other "free marketeers" claim that Americans "freely choose" to drive everywhere and live in sprawl locations. That it is a restriction in freedom to discourage such a lifestyle -- ignoring the fact that such a lifestyle reduces the ability of a community to provide other lifestyle and travel choices, and thereby forcing people to only be able to live the auto-dependent lifestyle.

An important condition that these sprawl apologists conveniently fail to acknowledge is that this large consumer demand for auto-dependent sprawl is fueled, significantly, by a market heavily distorted with enormous government subsidies (such as free roads, free parking, underpriced gas, and unpaid emergency services). End those subsidies (totaling over $174 billion each year in the early 1990s), and the new, substantially different "price signals" that Americans experience will encourage radical changes in what is desired with regard to travel and lifestyle. Price signals that are not distorted by subsidies will mean, in other words, that most Americans will no longer be screaming so loudly to protect the auto-dependent lifestyle.

The great irony is that the "libertarian" supposedly abhors government subsidies. Yet they are happy to overlook auto/sprawl subsidies. Why the double standard? 

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