Widening roads in cities like Austin only makes congestion worse as political pressure works against smart transportation planning.
IH-35 near downtown Austin: the most congested road corridor in Texas. Image from CultureMap Austin.
Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
AUSTIN — Contrary to much public opinion, congestion in fast-growing cities like Austin cannot be relieved by expanding roadway capacity because existing congestion and latent demand soon shift and fill up the newly added capacity.
To make sense of why there is still such strong political support for expanding capacity on IH-35, we need to understand Texas road politics, as reflected in the Texas Department of Transportation’s history and current policies. Past and current attempts by TxDOT to build enough roads to deal with increasing demand have left TxDOT with more than $20 billion in debt, plus a backlog of unsustainable construction and road maintenance obligations, despite a policy in support of privatized toll roads.
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