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OK I'll try one last time. Build all the roads you want. Spend the entire US economy building roads. The number of cars will expand to fill all available highways until the entire North American Continent is a vast interlaced parking lot and every square mile not dedicated to highways is growing corn for fuel. Not one car on the highway will exceed 50 MPH because there is no room.

look at every urban area in the US that has built roads over the last 20 years. See any improvement in traffic flow? Is it taking you less time to go from Atlanta to Orlando this year versus in 2000? Doesn't matter how much is spent on highway development or where the money comes from, the rate of increase in the number of cars exceeds the rate at which we can expand the highways.

There, I got it out of my system......

There, I got it out of my system......

Glad to be of service.

Traffic is indicative of the amount of business being done. When the traffic strangles business, business will move elsewhere. Traffic problem solved. Want business, build roads. Want depression, don't worry about it.

OK I'll try one last time. Build all the roads you want. Spend the entire US economy building roads. The number of cars will expand to fill all available highways until the entire North American Continent is a vast interlaced parking lot and every square mile not dedicated to highways is growing corn for fuel. Not one car on the highway will exceed 50 MPH because there is no room.

look at every urban area in the US that has built roads over the last 20 years. See any improvement in traffic flow? Is it taking you less time to go from Atlanta to Orlando this year versus in 2000? Doesn't matter how much is spent on highway development or where the money comes from, the rate of increase in the number of cars exceeds the rate at which we can expand the highways.

Oddly, though your first paragraph eloquently makes a sarcastic case to show how silly the "you can't build out of congestion", your second paragraph has me in doubt that you might actually believe this nonsense.

But the true solution, in this land of 50 states, is for the feds to butt out, let us keep all our gas taxes, have minimal safety and signage standards, and let the experiment begin. If the socialists want to buy billion dollar rail systems, let them, if other want toll roads, let them. Then, we won't have to listen to the socialists telling us how spending driver's money on the infrastructure drivers use is a dumb idea. We'll have proof one way or the other.

I'm glad you managed to get that off your chest. Those liberal talking points can really clog up the ol thinker, can't they?!

There is no evidence that "The number of cars will expand to fill all available highways until the entire North American Continent is a..." but it sure does sound frightful.

But I was really drawn to this: "look at every urban area in the US that has built roads over the last 20 years..."

In the State of Washington they haven't built a lane mile of new road (at least on the West Side) in almost 30 years (in their defense, they are building a second bridge on HWY 16 AKA the Tacoma Narrows) What they have built is HOV and special access. They have spend billions of dollars doing so. You are right in one thing - for all they've spent there has been a decrease in traffic-flow efficiencies, not an increase.

In other words, the transportation authorities haven't taken the measures necessary to accommodate the increases in population in all of this time. What is needed (desperately!) is to build more lane miles! There is no "magic pill" that will solve the mess that the liberals have built for us, but ignoring the root cause only postpones (and magnifies) the problem.