No, it doesn't. Why can't some of you understand basic economics?
For simplicity, let us have City Core (C), the suburbs reachable with a one hour commute at the worst (S), and the rural area/farmland (F) further out, and ultra-rural deliverance areas beyond that (D).
No one wants to go buy a piece of Farmer Joe's land in zone F and build a house when it takes 3 hours to drive to work. Therefore relatively few people live out there. Because so few live out there, many other people don't want to live out there (not much shopping, no entertainment, few schools, etc).
Now the road is widened. In C, it goes from six lanes to ten. In S, it goes from four to eight. In F, a new closed-access highway with four lanes is built.
What is the result? Why spend $650,000 on a house in S when you can build the same house in F for $300,000? Which is in fact what a ton of people do. Over a period of ~20 years, developers buy up the farmland in zone F, subdivide it, and build houses. People move for the cheaper/larger housing; businesses move in, retail is built, and now we have zone S'. You have four lanes of traffic from zone F connecting to an expanded eight lanes in zone S, which was originally four lanes. Can you spot the problem? Hint: 8 - 4 = 4. Thus the "effective" number of lanes is unchanged for the people living in zone S, even though we presume both S and C have increased density by building taller buildings, renovating to subdivide houses into apartments, etc.
Same for the people in zone C, where the four additional lanes of traffic from S' eat all the excess capacity from the expansion.
What was zone D becomes the new zone F'. Soon as they build some excess road capacity (damn hippies and liberals! what a bunch of Phooey, we should just build more roads) all our problems will be solved!!!
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So yes, in a place like NYC with massive over-demand for transportation, you are correct. But here in Dallas, we've been building tons of new roads all over for the past 50 years and it hasn't changed much, it has merely enabled people to buy up farmland and move further away. Plano in the 1960s was all farms, now it's been 100% build on (literally, the city has no further room to grow). Same for Allen. McKinney is almost completely built now. Any further road expansion will require tearing down skyscrapers, double-decking, or tunneling which magnify the cost of building new roads by an order of magnitude or worse.
Dallas is living proof that building more roads won't help congestion. It might lower home prices or allow your city to continue expanding, but it won't help with commute times or congestion beyond a small temporary bump.
For simplicity, let us have City Core (C), the suburbs reachable with a one hour commute at the worst (S), and the rural area/farmland (F) further out, and ultra-rural deliverance areas beyond that (D).
No one wants to go buy a piece of Farmer Joe's land in zone F and build a house when it takes 3 hours to drive to work. Therefore relatively few people live out there. Because so few live out there, many other people don't want to live out there (not much shopping, no entertainment, few schools, etc).
Now the road is widened. In C, it goes from six lanes to ten. In S, it goes from four to eight. In F, a new closed-access highway with four lanes is built.
What is the result? Why spend $650,000 on a house in S when you can build the same house in F for $300,000? Which is in fact what a ton of people do. Over a period of ~20 years, developers buy up the farmland in zone F, subdivide it, and build houses. People move for the cheaper/larger housing; businesses move in, retail is built, and now we have zone S'. You have four lanes of traffic from zone F connecting to an expanded eight lanes in zone S, which was originally four lanes. Can you spot the problem? Hint: 8 - 4 = 4. Thus the "effective" number of lanes is unchanged for the people living in zone S, even though we presume both S and C have increased density by building taller buildings, renovating to subdivide houses into apartments, etc.
Same for the people in zone C, where the four additional lanes of traffic from S' eat all the excess capacity from the expansion.
What was zone D becomes the new zone F'. Soon as they build some excess road capacity (damn hippies and liberals! what a bunch of Phooey, we should just build more roads) all our problems will be solved!!!
---
So yes, in a place like NYC with massive over-demand for transportation, you are correct. But here in Dallas, we've been building tons of new roads all over for the past 50 years and it hasn't changed much, it has merely enabled people to buy up farmland and move further away. Plano in the 1960s was all farms, now it's been 100% build on (literally, the city has no further room to grow). Same for Allen. McKinney is almost completely built now. Any further road expansion will require tearing down skyscrapers, double-decking, or tunneling which magnify the cost of building new roads by an order of magnitude or worse.
Dallas is living proof that building more roads won't help congestion. It might lower home prices or allow your city to continue expanding, but it won't help with commute times or congestion beyond a small temporary bump.