A few years ago I moved from New York City to a forest in New England. It’s very peaceful here, and very bucolic, and very spread-out: Every trip now requires a car. Which is fine—in fact, it’s great; I love driving. But I can’t stand the god-forsaken infernal traffic. I could have written this column in the time I’ve spent stationary on highways during the last couple days.
Traffic in America is getting worse. According to a study by Texas A&M, last year Americans wasted 7 billion hours stuck in traffic—traffic in which they wasted $160 billion dollars on gas. Why? Inadequate roads and stupid traffic laws. It’s time we fixed both.
First, the roads: The population of the country is constantly increasing—by a little less than 1 percent annually, or about three million new people every year, including about one million legal immigrants; excluding about one million illegal immigrants. According to the Brookings Institution, between 1980 and 2000, 1.2 new cars were added to the American car population for every 1 person added to the human population. Which means, assuming this ratio remains accurate, we add roughly 5 million cars a year to our traffic problem.
The only time I think about immigration, outside of reading the news, is when I’m stuck in traffic. There are too many people on the roads. I’m not objecting to the people, mind you—I’m objecting to the roads. Road growth is lagging far behind population growth. Between 2000 and 2013 (the most recent year for which I can find data), we added only about 6,000 lane-miles of highway to our National Highway System, which stands at about 180,000 miles total (measured not in lane-miles but in distance). During that time, the population of the country grew by 34.3 million (excluding illegal immigrants). This period encompasses the massive 2009 Obama infrastructure stimulus. It’s pathetic.
Why aren’t we building more roads? Lack of political will and ambition, mostly. Every minute of highway construction annoys enormous numbers of people, whereas no one enjoys highways until they’re 100 complete complete—by which time the political damage has been done. Particularly bad is the environment angle: The suggestion of a new road sends environmentalists to their fainting couches. The politicians in their pockets go with them.
Environmental voters are a constituency of the left. Traditionally, new immigrants are too. I suggest that, if necessary, entrafficed conservatives should try tying the two together: immigration only in proportion to highway construction; a quid pro quo to serve the interests of both the Democratic Party and everyone else in the country. No new traffic without new roads. No immigration increases until I-95 is a double decker highway. Maybe a triple decker in the most heavily trafficked areas, to accommodate the people who will drive more as road capacity increases (a well documented statistical certainty).
That would handle the roads, but our national traffic nightmare isn’t just caused by inadequate roads. It’s also caused by bad laws. First off: speed traps make traffic worse and drivers more dangerous. A passel of studies have shown that drivers in areas frequented by traffic cops spend a lot of their attention looking for police cars, and proportionally less on driving. Speed traps also cause drivers to change speed suddenly and arbitrarily–when they see cops, when they think they see cops, and when they expect to see cops. They hit the brakes; the drivers behind them hit their brakes; a chain reaction begins, and ends in a traffic jam.
And, anyway, speed traps don’t actually induce people to obey speed limits. If they did, they wouldn’t be such a reliable source of income for the government (which, cynics observe, is the only reason they exist). So: abolish speed traps.
Next, abolish speed limits. When the national 55-mph speed limit was axed, Ralph Nader warned that “history will never forgive Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life.” A year after the repeal, in 1997, there were 66,000 fewer road injuries than the year that led up it (’95), because drivers spent less time managing their speeds and more time driving. American politicians need to be reminded from time to time that permitting Americans freedom doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll act like idiots. Politicians should also bear in mind that the penalty for vehicular manslaughter is a much greater deterrent than a traffic ticket. So is the shame of killing someone. So is crashing your car. So is being maimed in a car crash, or being burnt to death. Insurance premiums deter people more effectively than speed limits. So does common sense. Speed limits are a tax by other means.
But, you might point out, raising speed limits is different from abolishing them. You would then be pleased to know that Germany, which has the only speed limit-free highways in the world, records no difference in the number of deaths on speed-limited vs. -unlimited highways.
There are two main reasons for this: First, people are focused on driving instead of obeying the whims of bureaucrats. Second, German drivers use the passing lane only for passing. Idiots who drive in the left lane and prevent faster drivers from passing are a sure and pestilential cause of both congestion and accidents, as people struggle to get around them. Traffic cops should be confined to fixing this problem.
The data we have show that speed-unlimited roadways don’t cause more deaths, despite what the nation’s grandmothers may think. They do cause people to get where they’re going faster. We need more of that in the United States.
Get the government to build new highways. Twist its arm if necessary. Abolish speed traps. Abolish speed limits. Persuade idiots to stop blocking traffic in the left lane. Save 7 billion hours and 160 billion dollars. Write your congressman.
