Stop trying to solve traffic and start building great places

It’s a situation far too common for most Americans. You’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway, again. Hundreds of cars are idling around you. It’s a typical, backed-up commute to work. Frustrated, you might wonder: How did we get here?

It wasn’t an accident. Our congested commutes are the result of decisions that stretch back decades, to when Americans began to build their communities around cars. Today, the ways in which we plan and invest in transportation continue to contribute to problems like congestion, lack of accessible and affordable transportation options, and a sprawling, unsafe, and ecologically destructive built environment. 

Behind many of these challenges lies a measure familiar to transportation planners and engineers: “level of service,” or LOS. This seemingly innocuous statistic, however, is one of the biggest reasons we’re literally and figuratively stuck in traffic—and it signals a need for a new way to guide our future plans and investments. Click here to read the full article by the Brookings Institute