IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v4y1997i1p5-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The self-defeating nature of urban road capacity policy : A review of theories, disputes and available evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Mogridge, Martin J H

Abstract

For over 30 years, an argument has been proceeding among researchers who have analysed trends in urban traffic conditions, with notable contributions from Downs, Thomson, Smeed, Zahavi, Bly, Webster and the author. The argument has been rather theoretical, but has an important policy issue at its heart: if urban road capacity is increased, does this result in some improvement in traffic speeds (as traffic engineers have hoped), or does it make congestion worse (as many urban authorities now suspect)? Resolving this question depends on explaining the ubiquitous observations that there is a very wide variation in day-to-day running speeds for individual vehicles on particular journeys, but there is only slight long-term change in average traffic speeds, in spite of the substantial growth in car ownership and the many different transport policies which have been adopted. This paper reviews the views and empirical evidence that have been put forward to date, and defends the conclusion that the counter-intuitive argument is in fact correct: increasing road capacity in congested conditions can make congestion worse. The reason for this lies in the interaction between private and public transport, or rather between individual and collective transport. An important policy conclusion follows: a necessary condition for increasing journey speeds in towns (for both car users and collective transport users) is to improve the quality of collective transport. Sample calculations suggest that the average direct journey speed in central London may be more than doubled by such a policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Mogridge, Martin J H, 1997. "The self-defeating nature of urban road capacity policy : A review of theories, disputes and available evidence," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 5-23, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:4:y:1997:i:1:p:5-23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967-070X(96)00030-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emmett Brady, Michael, 1993. "Dynamic stability, traffic equilibrium and the law of peak-hour expressway congestion," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 229-236, June.
    2. M.J.H. Mogridge, 1979. "Changing Spatial Patterns in the Journey-to-Work : a comparison of the 1966 and 1971 Census Data in London," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 16(2), pages 179-190, June.
    3. Moshe Ben-Akiva & André de Palma, 1986. "Some Circumstances in Which Vehicles Will Reach Their Destinations Earlier by Starting Later: Revisited," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 52-55, February.
    4. R. J. Smeed, 1967. "Some Circumstances in Which Vehicles Will Reach Their Destinations Earlier by Starting Later," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(4), pages 308-317, November.
    5. G. E. Cantarella & E. Cascetta, 1995. "Dynamic Processes and Equilibrium in Transportation Networks: Towards a Unifying Theory," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(4), pages 305-329, November.
    6. Williams, H. C. W. L. & Lam, W. M. & Austin, J. & Kim, K. S., 1991. "Transport policy appraisal with equilibrium models III: Investment benefits in multi-modal systems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 293-316, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kitamura, R. & Nakayama, S. & Yamamoto, T., 1999. "Self-reinforcing motorization: can travel demand management take us out of the social trap?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 135-145, July.
    2. Heyndrickx, Christophe & Vanheukelom, Toon & Proost, Stef, 2021. "Distributional impact of a regional road pricing scheme in Flanders," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 116-139.
    3. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Sabrina Hammiche, 2009. "Public Transit Capacity and Users Choice: AnExperiment on Downs-Thomson Paradox," Working Papers halshs-00405501, HAL.
    4. Hörcher, Daniel & Tirachini, Alejandro, 2021. "A review of public transport economics," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).
    5. Wang, Wei (Walker) & Wang, David Z.W. & Zhang, Fangni & Sun, Huijun & Zhang, Wenyi & Wu, Jianjun, 2017. "Overcoming the Downs-Thomson Paradox by transit subsidy policies," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 126-147.
    6. Francesco Filippi, 2022. "A Paradigm Shift for a Transition to Sustainable Urban Transport," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-27, March.
    7. Bindong Sun & Tinglin Zhang & Zhou He & Rui Wang, 2017. "Urban Spatial Structure And Motorization In China," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 470-486, June.
    8. Hans Jakob Walnum & Carlo Aall & Søren Løkke, 2014. "Can Rebound Effects Explain Why Sustainable Mobility Has Not Been Achieved?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(12), pages 1-28, December.
    9. Gonzales, Eric Justin, 2011. "Allocation of Space and the Costs of Multimodal Transport in Cities," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt7s28n4nj, University of California Transportation Center.
    10. Gonzales, Eric Justin, 2011. "Allocation of Space and the Costs of Multimodal Transport in Cities," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt07x7h9pg, University of California Transportation Center.
    11. Sweet, Matthias N., 2014. "Do firms flee traffic congestion?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 40-49.
    12. Basso, Leonardo J. & Jara-Díaz, Sergio R., 2012. "Integrating congestion pricing, transit subsidies and mode choice," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(6), pages 890-900.
    13. Næss, Petter, 2012. "Urban form and travel behavior: experience from a Nordic context," The Journal of Transport and Land Use, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, vol. 5(2), pages 21-45.
    14. Zhi (Aaron) Cheng & Min-Seok Pang & Paul A. Pavlou, 2020. "Mitigating Traffic Congestion: The Role of Intelligent Transportation Systems," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 653-674, September.
    15. Tønnesen, Anders, 2015. "Policy packages and state engagement: Comparing car-use reduction policy in two Norwegian cities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 89-98.
    16. Zhang, Fangni & Yang, Hai & Liu, Wei, 2014. "The Downs–Thomson Paradox with responsive transit service," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 244-263.
    17. Leibowicz, Benjamin D., 2020. "Urban land use and transportation planning for climate change mitigation: A theoretical framework," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 284(2), pages 604-616.
    18. Tapio, Petri, 2005. "Towards a theory of decoupling: degrees of decoupling in the EU and the case of road traffic in Finland between 1970 and 2001," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 137-151, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. A. Stathopoulos & T. Tsekeris, 2003. "Framework for analysing reliability and information degradation of demand matrices in extended transport networks," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 89-103, January.
    2. Justin Siegel & Joaquín Cea & José Fernández & Renán Rodriguez & David Boyce, 2006. "Comparisons of Urban Travel Forecasts Prepared with the Sequential Procedure and a Combined Model," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 135-148, June.
    3. Daganzo, Carlos F., 1995. "Properties of link travel time functions under dynamic loads," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 95-98, April.
    4. Han, Linghui & Sun, Huijun & Wu, Jianjun & Zhu, Chengjuan, 2011. "Day-to-day evolution of the traffic network with Advanced Traveler Information System," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 44(10), pages 914-919.
    5. David Watling, 2002. "A Second Order Stochastic Network Equilibrium Model, II: Solution Method and Numerical Experiments," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(2), pages 167-183, May.
    6. Sun, Mingmei, 2023. "A day-to-day dynamic model for mixed traffic flow of autonomous vehicles and inertial human-driven vehicles," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    7. Jiayang Li & Zhaoran Wang & Yu Marco Nie, 2023. "Wardrop Equilibrium Can Be Boundedly Rational: A New Behavioral Theory of Route Choice," Papers 2304.02500, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    8. Paolo Delle Site, 2017. "On the Equivalence Between SUE and Fixed-Point States of Day-to-Day Assignment Processes with Serially-Correlated Route Choice," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 935-962, September.
    9. Siyu Chen & Ravi Seshadri & Carlos Lima Azevedo & Arun P. Akkinepally & Renming Liu & Andrea Araldo & Yu Jiang & Moshe E. Ben-Akiva, 2021. "Market Design for Tradable Mobility Credits," Papers 2101.00669, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2022.
    10. Kumar, Amit & Peeta, Srinivas, 2015. "A day-to-day dynamical model for the evolution of path flows under disequilibrium of traffic networks with fixed demand," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 235-256.
    11. He, Xiaozheng & Guo, Xiaolei & Liu, Henry X., 2010. "A link-based day-to-day traffic assignment model," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 597-608, May.
    12. Watling, David P. & Hazelton, Martin L., 2018. "Asymptotic approximations of transient behaviour for day-to-day traffic models," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 90-105.
    13. Katharina Parry & David P. Watling & Martin L. Hazelton, 2016. "A new class of doubly stochastic day-to-day dynamic traffic assignment models," EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 5(1), pages 5-23, March.
    14. Liu, Peng & Liao, Feixiong & Tian, Qiong & Huang, Hai-Jun & Timmermans, Harry, 2020. "Day-to-day needs-based activity-travel dynamics and equilibria in multi-state supernetworks," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 208-227.
    15. Xiaomei Zhao & Chunhua Wan & Jun Bi, 2019. "Day-to-Day Assignment Models and Traffic Dynamics Under Information Provision," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 473-502, June.
    16. Agostino Nuzzolo & Francesco Russo & Umberto Crisalli, 2001. "A Doubly Dynamic Schedule-based Assignment Model for Transit Networks," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 268-285, August.
    17. Zhaoming Zhou & Jianbo Yuan & Shengmin Zhou & Qiong Long & Jianrong Cai & Lei Zhang, 2023. "Modeling and Analysis of Driving Behaviour for Heterogeneous Traffic Flow Considering Market Penetration under Capacity Constraints," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-21, February.
    18. Bie, Jing & Lo, Hong K., 2010. "Stability and attraction domains of traffic equilibria in a day-to-day dynamical system formulation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 90-107, January.
    19. Guo, Ren-Yong & Szeto, W.Y., 2018. "Day-to-day modal choice with a Pareto improvement or zero-sum revenue scheme," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-25.
    20. Wang, Jian & He, Xiaozheng & Peeta, Srinivas, 2016. "Sensitivity analysis based approximation models for day-to-day link flow evolution process," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 92(PA), pages 35-53.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:4:y:1997:i:1:p:5-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.