Well, sure, the article doesn't fully describe the intricacies of the situation... but neither do your anecdotes. But nevertheless, the study mentioned in the

Well, sure, the article doesn't fully describe the intricacies of the situation... but neither do your anecdotes. But nevertheless, the study mentioned in the article does show that building more roads does not make traffic better: > "[the researchers compared] the amount of new roads and highways built in different U.S. cities between 1980 and 2000, and the total number of miles driven in those cities over the same period. “We found that there’s this perfect one-to-one relationship,” said Turner. If a city had increased its road capacity by 10 percent between 1980 and 1990, then the amount of driving in that city went up by 10 percent. If the amount of roads in the same city then went up by 11 percent between 1990 and 2000, the total number of miles driven also went up by 11 percent. It’s like the two figures were moving in perfect lockstep, changing at the same exact rate."