Why are we still widening highways?

 Seriously.  Why are we still widening highways, when we know that highway widening projects (1) increase traffic, therefore increasing greenhouse gas emissions and running counter to our climate change mitigation goals; (2) don’t relieve congestion in the long run, because new capacity is filled up with new traffic in 5 - 10 years; (3) have major negative social and environmental impacts; and (4) cost a lot of money, draining resources from many alternative projects?  (I say “we know,” but of course not everyone is in agreement with these points – more on that shortly.)  Reason number one is enough for me, but clearly all these factors, and more, are not enough to stop many very large, controversial projects from going forward.

It does seem perplexing, but fortunately there is new research that sheds light on the question.  A recently published PhD dissertation by Amy Lee at the University of California, Davis, addresses just this question.  (“The Policy and Politics of Highway Expansions,” available here.  Read the Abstract and the Conclusions chapter if you don’t feel like wading through all 300+ pages.)

Lee approaches the issue through what I would call a political sociology lens.  She outlines the process by which a set of freeway expansion projects were advanced in California and identifies the key actors involved.  She then interviewed many of these key actors – state DOT officials, MPO staff, local elected officials, etc. – to explore their understanding of the issues and their reasons for advancing these projects.

The key findings for me (I am simplifying and adapting from Amy Lee’s conclusions):

1. Congestion is the main driver of these projects.  Many of the decision makers – especially local elected officials – are eager to do something about congestion, even though they may understand that the benefits of these particular projects will be transitory and insignificant in the long run.  As Lee says:

“So although highway expansion projects do not solve the foundational policy problems – e.g., separated land uses, auto-centric communities, housing unaffordability and segregation, lack of local jobs, or air pollution – they do offer a concrete and immediate avenue for elected officials to demonstrate that they are working for their constituents.”

2. Although most of the actors have at least some understanding of the concept of induced traffic, they tend to view it as a long-term problem, something to be addressed tomorrow.  As one actor put it, “The short-term congestion relief is worth it.”

3. There are still many actors, including the construction industry and building trades, that see benefits in the sheer scale and expense of highway widening projects. 

4. There are also psychological factors at play.  Engineers who have been trained to solve straightforward problems are reluctant to enter the morass of social and environmental issues in the modern transportation realm, tending to fall back to their design manuals.  A quote from one actor is worth showing in full:

“Induced travel is counter to why practitioners became engineers to begin with. They became an engineer to find a problem, with a formula, and a solution, end of story. Induced travel is disturbing to their worldview in some fundamental way. It disturbs their identity and ego. Engineers don’t want to be bothered with messy things like people. They’re used to deciding where huge amounts of money go and getting to be at ribbon cuttings. Unfortunately, it’s not much more complicated than that.”

5. Actors sometimes also believe that expansion projects promote other societal goods, such as access to housing, transportation equity, and economic development.

6. Developers, local elected officials, and various business interests may support highway widenings because they understand that increasing highway capacity promotes land development – notwithstanding the fact that the sprawl development stimulated by these projects works counter to climate change and environmental goals.

So how do we stop the highway widening juggernaut?  Amy Lee has a number of suggestions, many specific to the California context.  California already has a significant head start in this regard in that regional transportation plans must undertake to reduce total traffic (vehicle miles traveled) over time and individual highway widening projects must mitigate any increased traffic they generate.  Obviously these provisions have not been entirely successful, and Lee recommends some practical legislative and administrative steps to enforce them.

On a broader stage, Lee suggests the need for culture change among decision makers: planning for the long term rather than the short term and prioritizing the overarching goal of meeting the climate change challenge.  Not so easy to do.

Many thanks to Amy Lee for wading deep into the weeds of transportation decision making and for illuminating the complicated issues we will need to grapple with to stop the foolhardy practice of major  highway widening.