The Diminishing Returns of Highway Building

by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog

Today on the Streetsblog Network, David Levinson at the Transportationist presents some interesting explanations about why so much American road building is a poor use of funds:

In this image, the black lines represent roads and the blue dotted line represents a traveler. At some point, adding additional roads is subject to diminishing returns, saving people less time per dollar invested. Image: David Levinson

We are not building much new transportation in the US not just because the costs are too high, but because the benefits are too low.