The Costs of Access: Freeway Disamenities Across U.S. Cities

We construct city-level measures of freeway disamenities and examine their association with metropolitan growth. We combine neighborhood-level estimates from Brinkman and Lin (2024) with calibrated spatial models for U.S. metropolitan areas. Each city measure is based on a counterfactual that removes estimated disamenities while holding modeled travel times fixed. Cities with larger estimated disamenities grew more slowly, conditioned on total freeway mileage and initial population. Total freeway mileage is positively associated with growth in the same specification. Estimated disamenities are larger in cities with greater 1950 populations, more centralized freeway networks, and coastal geography. These patterns are consistent with local quality-of-life costs attenuating regional access related growth benefits.