> In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people

> In fact, the term in economics is “induced demand.” Building more roads around a city often won’t decrease traffic in the city, it will just make more people commute to the city from further away. It's a theoretical concept with no basis in reality as far as traffic is concerned. Every statistic I know of shows that more people move to cities, not farther away despite new roads. What drives people to longer commutes is not new roads, but high housing prices in cities. Also, when you build useful roads, traffic there certainly increases, but somehow ideologists neglect to measure how traffic on other roads previously used for the same route decreases.