Congestion Is Our Friend?

Few planners are as outspoken about the need for urban congestion as Dom Nozzi, a senior planner in Gainesville, Florida. In Saturday’s Gainesville Sun, he writes about all the wonderful benefits congestion can produce:

1. A disincentive for sprawl
2. A reduction in pollution
3. A reduction in average car speeds
4. A healthier urban core
5. Political pressure for more transit and bike paths
6. Infill, mixed use, and higher density residential

Of course, most of these statements are wrong, but I’ll leave the proof (which I have presented in many places before) for the readers. But Nozzi never even mentions the fact that congestion costs commuters (according to the Texas Transportation Institute) $78 billion a year — and that doesn’t even count the cost to businesses, which is probably roughly comparable. Even if some of Nozzi’s “benefits” were real (can anyone who is not a deluded planner seriously believe that making people go slower is a benefit?), it is hard to conceive that they can be as large as the cost.

Anyway, after praising congestion, Nozzi suddenly remembers that most people hate it, so he backpedals, claiming that “I do not necessarily encourage congestion” (emphasis added). Many of his policies, such as densification and diverting highway funds to transit and bike paths, do encourage congestion, though that may not “necessarily” be his intention.

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“Smart growth advocates must start looking upon congestion as a friend,” says Nozzi. “Otherwise, they unintentionally ally themselves with the sprawl lobby.” In other words, even if motorists were willing and eager to pay tolls to avoid congestion, Nozzi would not be too eager to accommodate them.

Or maybe he would, at least if he had read the economic analysis that concludes congestion tolls will do more to stop sprawl than urban-growth boundaries. But if Nozzi knew of and believed that work, he wouldn’t be so quick to give up on congestion fees, which politically should be no more difficult to sell than to claim that “congestion is our friend.”

Then Nozzi pulls out the old canard about how “congestion is a sign of a healthy community” because it proves that people want to be there. A few decades ago, Nozzi could have argued that air pollution was a sign of a healthy community because it proved that people had jobs and were going important places in their polluting cars. Could anyone take that seriously? New technologies, not social engineering, practically eliminated our air pollution problems, and new techniques such as electronic tolling and better traffic signal coordination can reduce congestion too.

Nozzi concludes by knocking “libertarians” (the quotation marks are his) for claiming that Americans “freely choose” to drive. He believes there are “enormous government subsidies” for driving. In fact, in 2005, the subsidies to the 4.4 trillion passenger miles of driving were $17.9 billion, or less than 0.4 cents per passenger mile. By comparison, the subsidies to the 47 billion passenger miles of transit were $29.4 billion, or 62 cents per passenger mile.

Subsidies to transit have outpaced subsidies to driving for decades, yet transit still makes up only about 1 percent of passenger travel. Somehow, I suspect that if 0.4-cent-per-passenger-mile subsidies had as much influence on American travel habits as Nozzi presumes, then 62-cent-per-passenger-mile subsidies would be even more significant. But they haven’t been.

Some libertarians have another idea: telecommute. That way, people can avoid both the congestion and Nozzi’s social engineering. Not everyone has that option, but the number who do is increasing each year faster than the growth in transit ridership.

The true libertarian view is to get rid of all subsidies and let the chips fall where they may. If people choose to move to downtowns, fine. If they choose to sprawl, fine. Just make sure they pay the full cost. Planners like Nozzi aren’t interested in that; they want to make sure people make the “right” choices, even if those choices mean wasting tens of billions of dollars a year in congestion.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

31 Responses to Congestion Is Our Friend?

  1. D4P says:

    If people choose to move to downtowns, fine. If they choose to sprawl, fine. Just make sure they pay the full cost

    If only it were that simple.

    1. There is no consensus on the costs of urban living and sprawl. Planner-types tend to think sprawl increases costs relating to commuting, pollution, lost leisure time, etc. Antiplanner-types tend to think the opposite. So: what are the “full costs”?

    2. Even if there WAS consensus, how do we measure these costs? How do we, for example, place a dollar value on carbon dioxide emissions or decreased “sense of community”? Some people try to assign dollar values for such things, but are not met with consensus regarding the fruits of their labor.

    3. Even if we COULD place dollar values on the costs of urban living and sprawl, what mechanism do you propose we use to charge people these costs? Do you advocate, for example, a “sense of community” tax? Should Big Government be involved in making people pay these costs? If not, who should be in charge, and what kind of authority would they have if they’re not Government? Why should people be forced to pay costs that they don’t even necessarily believe exist?

  2. Neal Meyer says:

    For once, I somewhat agree with opponent D4P. Assigning costs like pollution externalities is a tricky problem, though no doubt our air has been made cleaner than it was a generation ago through use of the blunt hammer of regulation. I am old enough to remember our family car from the 1970’s belching out black smoke out of the tail pipe when it ran under idling conditions, something that would not be tolerated in today’s America.

    As for assigning any other such “costs”, would we really be better off as a matter of policy if decisions like that were in the hands of politicians or bureaucrats? No doubt they would come under pressure to use such power to extract vengence for those poor souls who had the audacity to want to live in those sprawling outer areas of their municipalities.

  3. kens says:

    I think what Randal is probably suggesting is that residents pay the full cost of the infrastructure and public services they require, things that can be measured and assessed. As to CO2, there are ways that can be dealt with, such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system.

    As far as “sense of community” goes, the concept is so nebulous I don’t even know how to define it, much less figure out how to measure it. Presumably you think cities have it and suburbs don’t. Based on what? Any assessment of “sense of community” would be so personally subjective as to be meaningless.

    Trying to identify and measure this type of “externality” of suburban living is futile. To be fair, you would have to measure the benefits as well and offset one against the other. Since the public overwhelmingly chooses suburban areas over urban ones, they must think it offers them some pretty strong benefits.

    Let’s stop worrying about measuring and trying to control such things as “sense of community” and leave it up to individuals to determine for themselves what they value, then make their own decisions about where and how they want to live. Accept and respect people’s choices, then go about addressing the quantifiable, not subjective, problems they create, as we’ve done by mandating automobile emission controls and safety equipment.

  4. D4P says:

    Let’s stop worrying about measuring and trying to control such things as “sense of community” and leave it up to individuals to determine for themselves what they value, then make their own decisions about where and how they want to live

    Which of the following do you assume:

    1. People’s own decisions about where and how they want to live have no external (negative) impacts on other people

    2. People have a right to produce any and all external negative impacts on other people through their own decisions about where and how they want to live

  5. kens says:

    To address one aspect of whether congestion is good or bad, as far as CO2 emissions are concerned, congestion is very bad. The amount of CO2 emitted corresponds directly with the amount of fuel consumed, and congestion greatly reduces fuel economy. Cars’ highway mileage is typically around 40% or so higher than city mileage, in spite of the higher average speeds, because there’s much less stop-and-go driving. A true environmentalist would support road building (in particular freeway building*) and other measures to reduce congestion. The potential for reducing CO2 emissions by improving the flow of traffic is far greater than could ever reasonably be achieved by getting people out of their cars and into transit (i.e., doubling transit’s typical 1% travel share, no easy task, reduces auto travel and fuel use by 1%; just improving traffic signal operations alone would save up to 10% of the fuel consumed, according to the National Traffic Signal Report Card).

    The city I live in strives to be “the greenest city in America,” yet at the same time, is agressively implementing so-called “traffic calming” measures that increase congestion, and therefore CO2 emissions (arterial lane reductions, one-way to two-way conversions, etc.). Go figure.

    *Freeways improve the quality of life in neighborhoods by taking traffic off neighborhood arterials, thereby reducing emissions, noise, and safety hazards.

  6. Veddie Edder says:

    People who live in detached houses with lawns live lives of quiet, desperate solitude. People who live stacked on top of each other in apartment complexes know their neighbors and enjoy social relationships with those living near them. Also, the Patriots covered the spread in this year’s Super Bowl.

  7. Veddie Edder says:

    By the way, if you’re looking to deconstruct an op-ed piece on mobility, I have a nice candidate for you. I think it’s behind a subscriber wall, but Joseph B. White’s “Eyes on the Road” column in the Feb. 5 WSJ, will likely raise your pulse a bit.

    Next Car Debate: Total Miles Driven

  8. kens says:

    Which of the following do you assume:

    1. People’s own decisions about where and how they want to live have no external (negative) impacts on other people

    2. People have a right to produce any and all external negative impacts on other people through their own decisions about where and how they want to live

    D4P, nothing in my post suggests I believe either of those things. My point is to deal with real and measurable effects like air pollution and not speculative and subjective ones like loss of “sense of community.”

  9. Kathleen Calongne says:

    Kens says:

    “The city I live in strives to be “the greenest city in America,” yet at the same time, is agressively implementing so-called “traffic calming” measures that increase congestion, and therefore CO2 emissions (arterial lane reductions, one-way to two-way conversions, etc.). Go figure.”

    Here’s how it’s figured kens, CO2 emissions from traffic calming devices are GOOD pollution, as is pollution from idling cars around high-density development.

    Re: A sense of community. I guess I should be needy and lonely, I’m just not.

  10. prk166 says:

    I’m all for the telecommuting but that has HUGE social barriers to overcome before it can start to happen in mass.

    The problem with the Nozzi’s dreams of infill is that well, they’re just dreams. Go to any city and other than the rare spot or 3 building any sort of density with brown fields is politically impossible. I would argue the same crowd that espouses the evils of sprawl and brags about how they’ve made a point to live in the city turn into the usual NIMBYs if anyone wants to build any sort of building that’s “too big” in their neighborhood.

    And that sense of community stuff…. ya gotta love it. If people choose to live in places where Nozzi & co. imply lack that sense of community, maybe people don’t value it as much as they do. Or… get this, maybe Nozzi& co. refuse to see it. Here in Denver plenty of people spout of about how Highlands Ranch is some evil black hole. But the funny thing is when you get talking to people, you meet some that live there. And they love it and I have no doubt have a certain sense of community. It’s not the same that many people have in a place like the Platte Park neighborhood in Denver. But it’s there. Maybe the real problem is Nozzi & co. don’t like _that_ sense of community and feel it’s perfectly okay for them to FORCE other people to conform to it. Forza Facism! Woo-hooo!

  11. D4P says:

    My point is to deal with real and measurable effects like air pollution and not speculative and subjective ones like loss of “sense of community.”

    But just as there are plenty of people who scoff at “sense of community”, so are there plenty of people who scoff at air pollution. Who gets to decide which “problems” are real and which are not?

  12. Lorianne says:

    Let’s stop worrying about measuring and trying to control such things as “sense of community” and leave it up to individuals to determine for themselves what they value, then make their own decisions about where and how they want to live. Accept and respect people’s choices

    That would be great as long as there are CHOICES. Zoning and land use laws (particularly those of the last 40 years) seek to restrict choice, not encourage it. I wholeheartedly agree with the free market approach. Too bad we’ve yet to try it.

  13. Lorianne says:

    The WSJ article is accessible here:

    The Next Car Debate: Total Miles Driven

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120190455899936509.html

  14. Francis King says:

    “Even if some of Nozzi’s “benefits” were real (can anyone who is not a deluded planner seriously believe that making people go slower is a benefit?), it is hard to conceive that they can be as large as the cost.”

    I’m a regular (non-deluded) transport planner. Making people go slower has many benefits – it’s safer, car drivers treat roads as places instead of links, and because they aren’t relying on a ‘right of way’, they get where they are going faster, and in a better temper. Plus, it encourages walking and cycling.

    Links and places. Links are routes for getting from A to B, places are people where people take the time to shop, chat, and just hang around. There are lots of places in the UK, where car drivers blitz through at 30-40mph. If they were going slower, there might just be more support for improving the neighbourhoods.

    Not sure what congestion has to do with it. Slower speeds reduce congestion, by allowing smarter road junctions and more choice of transport. Not everyone wants to cycle along a road where there are many heavy vehicles going past at high speed.

    “5. Congestion creates political pressure to create a quality transit, bicycle, and walking system. Large numbers of citizens become enraged by the congestion and demand that politicians do something to alleviate it. And communities soon realize it is unaffordable to continue to ruin themselves by widening roads.”

    That’s surreal. Yes, citizens become enraged and demand – more roads! After all, with right-of-way, and cars going quickly, what alternative is there to the car?

  15. Francis King says:

    “Some libertarians have another idea: telecommute. That way, people can avoid both the congestion and Nozzi’s social engineering. Not everyone has that option, but the number who do is increasing each year faster than the growth in transit ridership.”

    The laws of the state where you live are important. In the UK, the employer is responsible for the health and safety of the employee, while they are at work. Please note, not ‘while they are in the office’. Therefore, the working environment at home is important, including the layout of the home office.

    There are other considerations including software licensing and data access. I can access my email at home, but not the data disks, which limits what I can do. It is difficult to secure data disks when there isn’t an air gap to the outside world. Also, a lot of people take advantage of Microsoft’s offer for Home and Student version of Office. It’s not for commercial use, though. There are many more products like this, and there is a legal problem with using them at home to do work.

    Generally, though, telecommunications is a very good idea. We can easily add more capacity by updating the fibre, switches, and servers. It is much harder and much more expensive to add new roads.

  16. Veddie Edder says:

    “” But just as there are plenty of people who scoff at “sense of community”, so are there plenty of people who scoff at air pollution. Who gets to decide which “problems” are real and which are not? “”

    Probably because you can measure aspects of pollution such as parts per million of whatever substance you’re looking for, and then the subjective point is whether that substance is harmful in its current concentration. The emphasis on “community” is wholly subjective. Many people leave core urban areas for suburban setting for the express purpose of engaging with a community. Mobility also plays a role in being able to socialize. If I’m limited to activities and clubs within a half hour travel distance, it’d be very helpful to me if I can get in a half hour of congestion free driving, as that opens up many more square miles of potential spots to pursue my bowling, dodgeball, book club, prayer group, PTA meeting or whatever.

    There has been an intellectual effort to mock the supposedly anodyne suburban experience. I think it’s very possible that in future years we’ll see a reaction against the anodyne faux urbanist development that is so trendy at present. The idea of compressing development and consigning people to light rail lines in the middle of an unpopulated prarie seems to me emminiently mockable.

  17. Dan says:

    Congestion is also caused by poor road design – that is: poor network connectivity. Road diets-completing streets-whatever actually decrease congestion (as Francis said) by allowing users more time to make better choices, thus lessining congestion.

    Yes, sorry to say, congestion relief is not cured by roadway miles alone; for example: a subdivision with few entry-exit points and many culs-de-sac causes congestion by routing traffic onto adjacent arterials inefficiently. Adding lane miles in many middle-ring suburbs with already cr*ppy road design will not cure congestion (presuming you could pony up enough funds to buy ROWs in areas of high rents and you can get many people to give up their homes for more road miles (and the neighbors having more noise).

    DS

  18. sustainibertarian says:

    In fact, in 2005, the subsidies to the 4.4 trillion passenger miles of driving were $17.9 billion, or less than 0.4 cents per passenger mile. By comparison, the subsidies to the 47 billion passenger miles of transit were $29.4 billion, or 62 cents per passenger mile.

    Except your subsidy analysis ignores fundemental requirements of basic cost analysis

  19. sustainibertarian says:

    Link troubles:

    Cost Analysis

  20. msetty says:

    Congestion is hardly the biggest or most important cost of our motor vehicle-dependent transportation system, as Todd Litman so eloquently points out in one of his latest reports, located at http://www.vtpi.org/ster.pdf.

    Congestion is only 8th on the list of expenses, as shown by Figure 1 on page 5 of the above referenced document, after such collective expenses as subsidized parking (see any work by Donald Shoup), crash damages, road facilities, and the costs of residential parking absorbed by housing rents and mortgages, not the cost of driving per se. If congestion is such a drag on the performance of local economies, so are these other categories.

  21. Dan says:

    Transportation’s (and planning’s) solutions get at what Francis and Michael and me wrote above: Context-Sensitive Solutions. Design roadways with particular goals in mind (deemphasizing throughput), and lots of good things fall out: congestion relief, non-motorized safety, placemaking, better local economies, etc.

    Solving the congestion “problem” without solving all the other problems that autocentricity creates won’t do much in the long run.

    DS

  22. Unowho says:

    First, let me say Hi Dom! (I know you’re reading this blog; anyone whose website prominently features his picture, hobbies, lengthy descriptions of athletic activities, and letters of praise is sure to have an intern running daily Google/Nexis searches for his name).

    I see you’ve got the first rule of the planner agenda down pat: demonize the automobile. The “auto subsidy” argument is a good one (just watch out for the wiseguy in the audience who asks about car drivers subsidizing public transit—that’s the time to start autographing your book).

    Once you feel ready, I suggest you take the next step and move from “subsidies” to “externalities” (5 mins. on Greg Mankiw’s blog will tell you all you need to know about the subject). When you run out of environmental externalities, you still have an endless supply of social externalities to call upon (my favorite: cars destroy the sense of community). Words of caution: when ripping auto driving for the damage it causes, follow the lead of the Victoria Secret studies cited above and don’t ever mention the costs associated with any alternatives. In particular, don’t ever mention the words mercury, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, mountaintop mining (in fact, don’t ever say the words “coal” or “nuclear”), ELF radiation, fine particulates, radon, lead, arsenic, or VOCs.

    Good luck!

  23. sustainibertarian says:

    Oh its definitely crazy unowho. I totally agree. I think the Antiplanner may be an intern for Dom as well, because he has a link to the victoria transport institute (under his ‘opponents’ link section). Or maybe an article that is speaking out against transport demand management is likely to get references to a major researcher and advocate of transport demand management. Considering I didnt know who Dom was until you mentioned his name, I think I can safely say that I am not his intern and you are a horses arse.

    Oh and thanks for following libertarian asprawlogist 101 and acting belligerent and all knowing about a topic you clearly have contempt for when it comes to fully measuring costs and benefits and how you choose to ignore all the data that goes against your love of the automobile.

    and don’t ever mention the costs associated with any alternatives

    and your alternatives are…drumroll……cars, cars, cars, cars and – oh please tell me something else – no just more cars. “Careful were getting congested too many cars.” “What do we do?” “I KNOW, I KNOW – MORE CARS.” Yippee. I think you got it this time

  24. prk166 says:

    “car drivers treat roads as places instead of links,” – Francis King

    WTF? A ROAD BY IT’S VERY NATURES IS TO GET FROM POINT A TO POINT B!!!

  25. Unowho says:

    “…you are a horses (sic) arse.”

    Aww, you’re making me blush.

  26. aynrandgirl says:

    Design roadways with particular goals in mind (deemphasizing throughput), and lots of good things fall out: congestion relief, non-motorized safety, placemaking, better local economies,

    That’s nonsense, Dan. “Deemphasizing throughput” does not relieve congestion, it increases it, since congestion is by definition a measure of throughput (or more precisely, a measure of throughput relative to current demand).

    As for “better local economies”, such claims are at best speculative, and at worst patent frauds. The idea that the local economy will be better if we make it difficult for local residents to leave because we’ve intentionally increased congestion on local roads is planning authoritarianism at its finest. Congested roads are a good reason for businesses not to locate in my area.

    Placemaking is like “sense of community”. It’s a Rorschach test. The idea that planners “make communities” is arrogant. Packing people together doesn’t make a community, forcing people to walk doesn’t make a community, and neither do bicycle paths.

  27. the highwayman says:

    Well in a perverse way, yes. The whole highway system was designed to implode.

    For example just compare a map of the Interstate highway system to that of a Amtrak system map, notice any thing?

    Also consider that Amtrak costs each person in the USA less than $5 a year or less than 2 cents a day!

    Cheers, Andrew

  28. Unowho says:

    “…just compare a map of the Interstate highway system to that of a Amtrak system map, notice any thing?”

    Hope this isn’t a trick question, but I’ll give it a shot: Amtrak has half the service mileage of the Interstates, serves less than two-thirds of the nation’s MSAs, does not serve all of the contiguous States, has a fixed schedule, and carries no freight?

    “…consider that Amtrak costs each person in the USA less than $5 a year or less than 2 cents a day!”

    That should be Amtrak’s slogan. Sounds better than “Only $50 per rider taxpayer subsidy!”

  29. Dan says:

    That’s nonsense, Dan. “Deemphasizing throughput” does not relieve congestion, it increases it, since congestion is by definition a measure of throughput (or more precisely, a measure of throughput relative to current demand).

    No.

    Poorly-designed roads cause congestion, in that they are not supportive of all users. The other users on or along the road are a large cause of congestion. Thus, doing a good job at designing for all users relieves congestion.

    Or perhaps you think I’m wrong. Convince the transportation engineers instead, because they are doing what I’m saying, not what you are imploring. Perhaps some of the commenters here can help you out. On second thought, never mind that.

    DS

  30. Kevyn Miller says:

    aynrandgirl said: “congestion is by definition a measure of throughput (or more precisely, a measure of throughput relative to current demand).”

    Technically congestion is measured as travel time or average speed relative to the legal speed limit.

    However the public perception of congestion is very much like “sense of community”. If congestion only occurs on some roads or only some of the time people notice it more than if congestion occurs everywhere all of the time. Congestion studies in New Zealand’s main cities found that congestion was worst in the one city where nobody complains about congestion. They don’t complain because the congestion occurs all the time over the entire road network. The cities that complain most about congestion have severe peak congestion at some locations but have very little off peak congestion. That makes the problem noticeable. The most congested city has the frog in boiling water situation. Since drivers never experience uncongested congestion except in ancient memory they just aren’t aware of it and thus don’t complain about it.

    Perversely, the latter city has no freeways so it’s average speed limits are lower than in the “congested” cities and therefore it’s real congestion relative to the “congested” cities is twice as bad as the official measurement. The “congested” cities have been decongested by freeways but when traffic volumes slow the speeds on freeways back to the pre-freeway speed limits everybody complains of congestion even though they wouldn’t have considered those speeds “congested” before the freeways were built. Unofficial surveys of traffic speeds in large towns reveal worse “congestion” than in any city, big or small.

    Most of the cost of congestion is actually the social cost of the time spent in traffic instead of with family and friends. As such congestion isn’t costing America 78 billion dollars a year. In fact if travel speeds on freeways are measured relative to non-freeway speed limits there might not be any cost at all. After all, the value of the off peak decongestion created by freeways has already been counted as an economic benefit of building the freeways. The nett cost of congestion rather than the gross cost of $78bn.

    Congestion tolls aren’t the only way to get rid of peak congestion. Getting rid of the nine-to-five workday would also do it. I think employers will continue to resist that change until they have to pay for the costs of the nine-to-five workday through higher wages to pay their employees congestion tolls.

    Alternatively, if you don’t like congestion move to small town where you won’t notice it.

  31. the highwayman says:

    Well in this sense traffic congestion is good, because it brings a bizarre market mechanism into play.

    Also if people didn’t like traffic congestion they wouldn’t drive in the first place.

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