Do more roads really mean less congestion for commuters?

摘要

Congestion is a major source of frustration for road users and has worsened over time in most cities. Different solutions have been proposed, such as introducing congestion charging, a favourite of transport economists, or investing in public transport. One solution that is most often put forward is to build more roads, but does this approach work? While China has increased its expressway network from 16,300 km in the year 2000 to around 70,000 km in 2010, the average commute time in Beijing for 2013 was 1 hour and 55 minutes, up 25 minutes from just the year before. Why, then, do residents of these cities with large amounts of road capacity, not live in a driving Utopia?