Urban road building and traffic congestion: What went wrong?

This paper investigates the claim that greater investment in roads would reduce traffic congestion and improve the environment in British and Australian cities. It provides an overview of the phenomenon known as induced traffic — the additional traffic generated in response to faster travel speeds made possible by the addition of road or motorway capacity — and broadly reviews the findings by government committees charged with the responsibility to investigate the outcomes from road proposals. When taken as a whole, there appears to be a cycle at play where road expansion is advocated to overcome congestion; people in affected neighbourhoods object, saying they want public transport to be improved instead; governments react to public complaint; road expansion policies are put on hold and new policy directions are investigated; congestion continues to be a problem, and; eventually road expansion policies creep back into government transport plans so that the cycle begins again. In light of this history, we ask why government administrations in the United Kingdom and Australia, and other parts of the world, have continued to increase road capacity as a solution to congestion when all the evidence indicates it generates additional traffic that perpetuates congested conditions? The authors attempt to answer this question by examining the structure of transport decision-making and governance systems and how these influence which views within society ultimately dominate transport policy. The authors compare community reactions to urban motorway proposals from Britain and Australia with those in Switzerland where direct democratic mechanisms feature in the decision-making system. The authors conclude that transport infrastructure decisions are not always motivated by the need to provide viable transport solutions for users. The representational democratic systems operating in Britain and Australia appear vulnerable to other interests and motivations that often conflict with the interests and wishes of the general community.

Language

  • English

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Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01361554
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS, ATRI
  • Created Date: Jan 27 2012 1:26PM