Charles Marohn wrote:

And that’s really the core problem commuting culture creates, a challenge that money spent fighting congestion only makes worse: the diffuse development pattern generates more public costs than it builds private wealth. These are low productivity environments, a financial imbalance that no transportation investment will overcome.

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We don’t have the money to fight congestion—we don’t even have the money to maintain the roadways we’ve already built—and since we can’t change the geometric limitations of our roadway, not matter the technology, we’re left with only one viable response: We have to reduce the demand for trips.

Let me state that in a more positive way: We need to provide alternatives that allow people to opt out of an automobile trip. We need to create options.

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What do options look like? They look like the ability to walk to the corner grocer instead of driving to the big box store. They look like the ability to bike to a neighborhood school instead of getting dropped off at the mega campus on the outskirts of town. They look like the ability to work from home and have your shopping delivered to you (and your neighbors) instead of each of you taking a trip on your own. 

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We have spent trillions making it easy to drive everywhere, so much so that we made it difficult to walk anywhere. We maxed out that model decades ago and have long been into diminishing returns. It’s time to start investing in the other direction.