What can we do about traffic congestion?

The Federal Government’s State of Australian Cities 2010 Report was released yesterday.  It says the avoidable cost of traffic congestion in Australia’s capital cities was $9.4 billion in 2005 and is expected to rise to $20 billion by 2020.

What can we do in a city like Melbourne about congestion? There are four basic ways to address the issue:

• Increase road space
• Shift travellers to a less-congested mode
• Suppress demand for road space
• Manage the level of demand

The first approach involves building more road capacity e.g. new or widened freeways.  However people seem to have an almost inexhaustible demand for travel, so as soon as a route gets faster due to added capacity, it pretty quickly fills up again until once more it becomes congested. Read the rest of this entry »