TDK Boulevard: Statistics Show that New Roads INCREASE TRAFFIC

PTC Council to have Special Called Meeting to Debate Future of TDK Road

As reported by the Citizen, the PTC Council will meet Tuesday 9-12 in a
Special Called Meeting to debate the wisdom of expending substantial city and
county funds for the construction of TDK Boulevard into Coweta County, in light
of recent revelations that a 10,000 person community has long been in the works
in reliance on the road.

QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED:

(1) WHY is this road needed ?

(2) Now that the Highway 54 Project has been completed, has there been
substantial improvement of inter-county traffic such that TDK is not longer
needed?

(3) Should the Council study this matter further before (a) potentially
affecting our city and county in an adverse manner and (b) wasting tax dollars;
and

(4) MORE FUNDAMENTALLY----- when you build new roads, do you make traffic worse
or better ?

This blog is presented to share the perceived answer to #4: New road
construction will almost always create a NET increase in traffic.

It can fairly be debated that building roads to reduce traffic actually accomplishes the opposite. ([1] ”The time has come for transportation officials to stop making congestion relief claims to bolster highway proposals. Not only has road construction proven to be an ineffective congestion relief strategy, but it is an expensive one as well.” The Texas Transportation Institute; [2] “Roads lead to sprawl and sprawling development leads to more driving. New roads rarely relieve congestion and in many cases actually make things worse.” http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/report00/roads.asp; [3] "Trying to cure traffic congestion by adding more capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt."
http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.html).

Two factors in the cause are known as (1) INDUCED TRAFFIC and (2) LATENT DEMAND (each of which is mentioned below). Many commentators have noted this strange result for 50 years: “The simple truth is that building more highways and widening existing roads...does nothing to reduce traffic. In the long run, in fact, it increases traffic. This revelation is so counterintuitive that it bears repeating: adding lanes makes traffic worse. This paradox was suspected as early as 1942 by Robert Moses, who noticed that the highways he had built around New York City in 1939 were somehow generating
greater traffic problems than had existed previously.” http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.html

What are the stats to back this up? Two good examples in looking at TDK are Atlanta and the State of California. The Southern California Association of Governments concluded that traffic-assistance measures, be they adding lanes, or even double-decking the roadways, would have no more than a cosmetic effect on Los Angeles' traffic problems. Stats to back it up.....According to a 2000 study involving detailed analysis of 34 California counties over 22 years, the Cervero concluded, through sophisticated statistical methods, that every 10% increase in highway construction produced a net increase of 5.6% in traffic. Build more roads, the problem got WORSE, for 34 counties over 22 years. Cervero, Robert and Mark Hansen, Road Supply-Demand Relationships: Sorting Out Causal Linkages, October 2000. INCREASES TRAFFIC !!! No more graphic example can be shown by the Coweta Development, poised to kick in when (but only if) local governments spend huge sums of money to build the TDK Boulevard.
USA Today published the following report on Atlanta: "For years, Atlanta tried to ward off traffic problems by building more miles of highways per capita than any other urban area except
Kansas City…As a result of the area's sprawl, Atlantans now drive an average of 35 miles a day, more than residents of any other city." (Note: the study is 6 years old; thats why commute times have skyrocketed— proof of the central thesis.) This is the first factor: INDUCED TRAFFIC. When the roads are widened and speed up, development speeds up and overwhelms the capacity and usually produces a net increase in traffic.

The other factor is known as LATENT DEMAND. “Since
the real constraint on driving is traffic, not cost, people are always ready to make more trips when the traffic goes away. The number of latent trips is huge--perhaps 30 percent of existing traffic. Because of latent demand, adding lanes is futile, since drivers are already poised to use them up.” (Donald D.T. Chen; "If You Build It, They Will Come…Why We Can't Build Ourselves
Our of Congestion." Surface Transportation Policy Project Progress VII.2 [March 1998]: I, 4.)

CONCLUSION

Probably the most sensible advice for the PTC Council comes from the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a group in Washington, D.C., that tracks public transportation use. According to the STPP's Roy Kienitz communities considering large projects ''should think long and hard about whether more roads are really the answer.''

Read Cal's story carefully and somewhere in the middle is this gem

"... the mayor and council asked the city attorney to research the legal requirements imposed upon the city by GRTA’s approval of two of the three projects, and the ramifications of halting the TDK Boulevard Extension due to the impact of the additional traffic on Peachtree City."

What the city attorney will say is they can stop the TDK extension (in PTC) if they want and their only legal requirement is to provide roadway improvements essential to public safety. Nowhere is there a requirement that one government entity spend their money to alliviate traffic problems caused by development in another county. Exhibit A is the 30 year old traffic jam on Johnson Ferry Road where it crosses the river from Cobb County. You'll notice they still built thousands of houses in Cobb County and many continue to use a woefully undersized road, but I digress.

So all of you who don't like Mr. Resse's development and the thousands of cars on TDK can go Tuesday night and tell Mayor Logsdon and the others why you don't like it and what they should do. It is obvious from the above quote that they are predisposed to kill TDK extension if they have a reason. Now it is up to you all to give them that reason by attending a council meeting and getting council's attention - with reasonable arguments - not just the whining and complaining we see in these blogs.

Personally, I'd prefer to see the road extended because of the increase in value of the land on the PTC side of the road, but I won't be speaking Tuesday - just listening.