Yeah, and then the "leaders" of the town complain that housing is so expensive in town. Somehow basic economics were never taught to these people: when you cut supply, prices rise. It's gotten to the point where over 80% of the Policemen and Firemen do not live in the town, and some drive for more than an hour to get to work. Of course, if there's ever an emergency, it may take a while to get backup, but we've got open space...
Of course, most of this space was probably going to be commercial space. But this just forces people to have to drive further to buy anything. Local residents were up in arms about a new Costco in Port Chester, NY (next town over). But if you don't allow any local CostCos, then everyone that wants to go to CostCo has to drive 12 or 15 miles to the next one. Which further exacerbates the traffic problems.
Another thing that is REALLY irksome is that all the leaders of local communities think that the way to improve traffic is to spend more on the local trains. Local trains do carry a great number of people. However, there's very limited parking at most train stations: waiting lists for a parking permit can be seven years for some stations. But whenever there's a proposal to build a parking garage that can hold more cars, all the locals go nuts about how a parking garage would really hurt the character of the neighborhood.