> Overall, VKT in the US doubled from 1983 to 2003, from 7,700 VKT to 15,900 VKT for interstate highways. For major urban roads, a similar pattern occurred – VKT went up from 15,000 to 30,000. In the same time span, the number of lane kilometers of interstate highways remained basically constant, while on major urban roads, it went up from 3,800km to 6,500km.
I don’t know how someone can trot out this stat and then claim with a straight face that new lanes cause congestion. What this states is that car traffic doubled over a 20 year period, and it doubled whether lane capacity increased (cities) or not (interstates).
The demand fills capacity is not a good rule of thumb either, from an economist's perspective. Shame on you. Many multi-lane highways are rather empty, why? Many roads are basically never used, why?
Lanes (transit corridors) are a river of money (funnels). When you have populations that are exchanging goods, jevon's paradox fills lanes to increase capital velocity that scales beyond the average value of infrastructure. Infrastructure cost is balanced against a perceived value, which is always skewed toward the larger (poorer) part of the population.
In this case, it's not a paradox at all that capital self-generates demand for this space. This also explains why some corridors are emptied as capital flees a locale.
The authors seem to suggest that demand for roads is infinite, as expanding roads merely increases the number of trips people choose to make, thus infinite expansion will result in infinite trips.
These analyses always appear to me as if they are without any understanding of how humans actually behave, resulting in nonsensical nonsense "laws".