Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion (Revised) (James A. Johnson Metro)

Congested roads waste commuters' time, cost them money, and degrade the environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem in their communities—and it only seems to be getting worse. In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic , Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners, he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the least palatable politically. St ill Stuck in Traffic c ontains new material on the causes of congestion, its dynamics, and its relative incidence in various parts of the country. In clear and realistic terms, Downs seeks to explore why traffic congestion has become part of modern American life and how it can be kept under control. Congested roads waste commuters’ time, cost them money, and degrade the environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem in their communities—and it only seems to be getting worse.

In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic, Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners, he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the least palatable politically.

Still Stuck in Traffic contains new material on the causes of congestion, its dynamics, and its relative incidence in various parts of the country. In clear and realistic terms, Downs seeks to explore why traffic congestion has become part of modern American life and how it can be kept under control.

Author Description:
Anthony Downs is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. His specialties are housing, real estste, real estate finance, metropolitan planning, demographics, and transportation. His books include New Visions for Metropolitan America (Brookings/Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 1994), and Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion (Brookings, 2004).

" Congested roads waste commuters' time, cost them money, and degrade the environment. Most Americans agree that traffic congestion is the major problem in their communitiesand it only seems to be getting worse. In this revised and expanded edition of his landmark work Stuck in Traffic , Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners, he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the least palatable politically. St ill Stuck in Traffic c ontains new material on the causes of congestion, its dynamics, and its relative incidence in various parts of the country. In clear and realistic terms, Downs seeks to explore why traffic congestion has become part of modern American life and how it can be kept under control. " Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The benefits of peak-hour traffic congestion -- How bad is traffic congestion? -- Causes of recent increases in peak-hour traffic congestion -- Incidents and accidents as causes of congestion -- Strategies for reducing congestion and four basic principles of traffic -- Reducing incident-caused congestion -- Increasing road-carrying capacity -- Creating more public transit capacity -- Peak-hour and other road pricing -- Demand-side behavioral tactics -- Remedies that increase densities -- Changing the jobs-housing balance -- Concentrating jobs in large clusters -- Local growth management policies -- Traffic congestion around the world -- Regional anticongestion policies -- -- Summary and conclusions -- Appendixes: A. The dynamics of traffic congestion. -- B. Graphic analysis of peak-hour road pricing. -- C. Translating gross residential densities into net residential densities. D.A spatial model for simulating changes. -- E. Clustering high-density housing near transit stops ---- Notes-- Index. "In this revised and expanded edition of his work Stuck in Traffic, Anthony Downs examines the benefits and costs of various anticongestion strategies. Drawing on a significant body of research by transportation experts and land-use planners, he counters environmentalists and road lobbyists alike by explaining why seemingly simple solutions, such as expanding public transit or expanding roads, have unintended consequences that cancel out their apparent advantages. He argues that while there might be some measurable gains from increasing housing densities, most other land-use strategies have little effect. Indeed, the most powerful solutions, including higher gasoline taxes, increased public funding for transit, and highway tolls, are also the least palatable politically."--Jacket In this edition, Anthony Downs seeks to assess the utility of anticongestion programmes. Drawing on a significant body of research from transportation experts and land-use planners, the book examines the advantages and disadvantages of various strategies In recent years, millions of U.S. metropolitan area residents have come to regard traffic congestion as their most serious local and even regional problem-with good reason.