> When it comes to roads, why is increasing capacity to resolve the capacity problem always automatically dismissed? Because those people are going somewhere a

> When it comes to roads, why is increasing capacity to resolve the capacity problem always automatically dismissed? Because those people are going somewhere and increasing capacity of one road typically just moves the bottleneck. The only exceptions to this are when the traffic is going through the area with the new capacity and other other side has excess capacity. So something like increasing the capacity on a city bypass will reduce congestion, but increasing capacity into the city wont. The other problem is induced demand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand), when driving is quick and easy more people will drive until that's no longer the case. > A politician that says "I'm going to spend billions on new cycle paths" is somehow going to be more popular than a politician that says "I'm going to spend billions on new roads". How many (non-dutch) cities in the world have spent billions on cycle paths? They should be more popular because they're doing something that will actually reduce traffic and save money long term (cycle paths require a lot less maintenance), but IME it's the ones promising new roads that keep getting elected.