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Chronically clogged Interstate 35 in Austin is getting for a multibillion-dollar expansion. Many city officials believe it won’t work, and there’s a very good reason why. 

Chronically clogged Interstate 35 in Austin is getting for a multibillion-dollar expansion. Many city officials believe it won’t work, and there’s a very good reason why. 

Photographer: Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis News via Getty Images

CityLab
Transportation

The Unstoppable Appeal of Highway Expansion

U.S. transportation authorities have spent billions widening urban freeways to fight traffic delays. What makes the “iron law of congestion” so hard to defeat?

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Twelve lanes of Interstate 35 slice through the heart of the city of Austin. But that doesn’t appear to be enough: The highway is often choked with truck and commuter traffic, which is only thickening as the regional population balloons. A recent study named Austin’s section of I-35 the worst bottleneck in Texas.

The Texas Department of Transportation, known as TxDOT, says it knows what to do: Widen the freeway. The agency proposes adding eight more lanes, at a projected cost of $7.9 billion.

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