The Definition of Insanity

By Joe Aiello / Director of Community Engagement + Organizing

Stop me if you have heard this one before:

The car traffic in “Urban City, USA” has gotten so bad that the city/state must look at all options to alleviate the gridlock. So they hire contractors and developers, host a number of community engagement events, handle a litany of concerns, draw up various ideas, and finally come up with a long term plan to…

Widen the highways.

Again.

You said it, Fred.

This is exactly what the city of Houston is doing starting next year (after a few years of covid/pandemic related delays). The plan is to take an already massive highway and add another 8 lanes (2 main and 2 express lanes in each direction) as well as redirecting the entire downtown portion of I-45 to run parallel to I-10.

All for the low, low cost of $11 billion.

*insert evil laugh here*

For the record, the Caltrain Electrification Project in California came in around $2.4B, and that included:

• Electrifying 51 miles of track from San Francisco to San Jose
• Installing a 25 kV catenary system
• Acquiring 133 rail cars for 19 seven-car trainsets
• Replacing signal systems and existing facilities
• Adding a positive train control (PTC) system

To go one step further, the entire Brightline West project between Southern California and Las Vegas is currently estimated to cost around $12B.

Oh, and this grand plan is also going to displace businesses and public housing. No biggie, right?

Narrator: $11.2Billion https://t.co/oN1o7Gwsp3

— Geoff Carleton (@CarletonGeoff) September 30, 2024

Look, I understand that traffic is terrible just about everywhere (I live in Chicago, trust me, I get it) and Houston is no exception. According to the INRIX scorecard for 2023, the Houston metro area ranked 8th worst in the US and 19th in worldwide congestion.

I used to travel to Texas a couple of times a year to visit friends about two decades ago, and even then I absolutely hated driving around. For someone who is afraid of heights, some of the off/on ramps around Houston are a terrifying white-knuckle experience.

But who is going to tell them that more lanes of highway DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

The New York Times tried to say it louder for those in the back early last year:

“The concept of induced traffic has been around since the 1960s, but in a 2009 study, researchers confirmed what transportation experts had observed for years: In a metropolitan area, when road capacity increases by 1 percent, the number of cars on the road after a few years also increases by 1 percent.”

The idea that “more lanes = relief” is not a modern thought, but because car culture in this country has such a chokehold on nearly everything we do - we continue to hope for a different outcome.

It’s the definition of insanity.

Thanks to neighbors and advocates in Houston, there are people fighting this project - but it might just be a losing battle. There must be a better way.

If there was only a “public transit” that could be funded with even just a fraction of what we spend on roads each year.

If there were only groups out there that could help fight for such options.

*sigh*

Wishful thinking, right?