The Congestion
Epidemic
Chronic congestion in New
Jersey negatively impacts
the individual citizen and
the overall state economy.
The three basic reasons for
today's congestion include:
- the cycle of transportation
capacity and land development;
- today's separated land
development patterns;
and
- an unconnected transportation
and land use network:
Transportation
capacity - land development
cycle: For
decades, the usual approach
to traffic congestion
was to add lanes and build
roads. However, the New
Jersey Department of Transportation
(NJDOT) has found that
additional lanes don't
always solve the congestion
problem. Additional lanes
sometimes make it attractive
to build new homes and
businesses, but this
development attracts
new people and the lanes
again become crowded and
need to be widened.
Separated
land use patterns: The idea of separating
land use, which began as
a way of separating industrial
and residential areas,
also separates people from
the goods and services
they need. It now requires
the use of a car, and sometimes
lengthy trips to meet basic
needs.

The transportation/land
use cycle shows
the futility
of "building our way out
of congestion".
Unconnected
street networks: The
graphic below depicts
the differences between
Traditional Development
patterns (Dense Network)
and Modern Development
patterns (Sparse Hierarchy).
These two distinct patterns
affect travel on the major
highways. Mile for mile,
a dense and connected street
network provides more ways
to get to the same location,
and has more carrying capacity
than a sparse hierarchy,
which requires all trips
use the same collector
roads.

Traditional
and Modern Development
patterns The combination of these
three trends has resulted
in the reality that driving
is often the only option
in many communities. The
trips that were once walkable
or bikeable, now add millions
of cars to our roads every
year.
The
Texas Transportation
Institute's Urban
Mobility Report on
congestion levels
and trends ranked
northern New Jersey
in 2005 as #2 out
of 437 urban areas
in travel delay and
excess fuel consumed
due to congestion
conditions. |
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