[mjmahone17]

Road usage isn’t necessarily success. For a political region, economic activity is usually considered a success.

If by building a larger road through your city, you induce people to live outside of your city instead of in it, then you’ve added costs while reducing your economic activity, while creating more total wasted hours in traffic in the process.

Are the trade offs worth it? Sometimes! But induced traffic demand is not by itself a success criteria for regions: it’s only a success if it means more people are able to work and have higher productivity in a region, as opposed to just spreading out the existing workers and reducing their productivity through increased commute times.

[twoodfin]

I’m not sure that tracks: If a new road allows me to build a home where I would not have built a home before, that’s economic activity enabled by the new road.

[alistairSH]

But it's activity somewhere other than where part of the road was built.

Take DC and NoVA, typical large suburb next to a large city. If DC wants to increase economic activity, does it want to invest in a new bridge that allows more people to live in NoVA (where most of their retail/commercial activity will occur)? Or, would DC be better off spending that money on redeveloping run-down neighborhoods and adding some light rail (or other transit improvements)?

[kevinmchugh]

Doesn't DC have a height limit on buildings? Seems like eliminating that would be a way for the city to increase economic activity without spending any money

[alistairSH]

Yes, that’s a fairly unique rule. IIRC to protect the aesthetics of the downtown monument/lawn zone (which includes the WH and Capitol). Arlington across the river has all the tall office buildings.

But I have no idea how much DC “needs” the vertical space for development. It isn’t nearly as dense as NYC - plenty of infill (re)development to be done, I would guess.

[massysett]

The workers have spread out because they prefer spread-out housing. They prefer larger homes on larger lots. Roads allow people to live where they wish in the housing they want. People are willing to accept longer commutes so they have the housing they want. This is a success.