Reading Time: 2 minutes

Traffic sucks! Your driving commute is taking way too long. Let’s figure out why—the real reason why.

Ugh. We all hate being stuck in traffic. And if you think it’s getting worse—you’re right.

In my city of Vancouver, British Columbia, two major commuter bridges have seen between 12 and 26 percent increases in traffic over a period of just four years. These trends are pretty standard.

Or take a megapolis like Los Angeles, California—where we see drivers spending an average of 62 hours per year inside their cars. (I feel a little sick.)

So what’s making traffic worse? Of course, the answer is obvious: vehicles. The more vehicles, the worse the traffic. Hard to find anyone who would disagree with that.

So, here’s a question for all you mayors and city councillors out there: if we can all agree that MORE cars makes traffic WORSE… why do we invest in infrastructure to accommodate more cars… Thereby literally investing in making traffic worse?

Now I know what you may be thinking… no, if you build more roads, traffic will ease because there’ll be more space.

Nope. That’s not what happens. Roads are like rivers. If you widen a river, the river just gets bigger. More water flows through. A creek becomes the Amazon.

It’s almost like supply and demand: make driving easier and more people will drive. More folks move to the suburbs. More commuting. More cars. More traffic. More traffic jams. It’s been studied.

(And we haven’t even dug into Braess’s Paradox yet. Maybe for another post.)

So what’s the solution? Well, once you accept that building roads makes traffic worse, you are left with—and I’ll paraphrase Sherlock Holmes here—the solution, no matter how improbable.

You need to build fewer roads to make traffic better.

Because every car you take OFF the road, is one less car holding up traffic.

Every pedestrian walkway facilitates folks leaving their cars at home.

Every bike is one less car. So build protected bike lanes and people will use them.

Every bus is 60-plus fewer cars. So buy more busses and prioritize their routes.

Every train is hundreds of fewer cars. So lay the track!

If you bike, walk or use public transit—you’re likely nodding. But if you exclusively drive, you need to understand that you may benefit most of all when your city invests in active transportation.

Because the more people who walk, bike or use transit means fewer drivers on the road.

Unless you like all those cars blocking your way?