Highway widening advocates offer up a kind of manifest destiny storyline: population and traffic are ever-increasing, and unless we accommodate them we’ll be awash in cars, traffic and gridlock. The rising tide of cars is treated as a irresistible force of nature. But is it?
Unfortunately, federal leaders still have a ways to go — many legislators have yet to acknowledge the e-bike’s demonstrated ability to replace car trips.
This week we’re joined by Linda Samuels, associate professor of urban design at Washington University in St. Louis, to talk about her book "Infrastructural Optimism." We chat about how growth for growth’s sake is not the answer, learn from postmodernist urbanism, and why systems should be more connected.
Participants in a study who received cash for choosing modes of transport that are most beneficial to society ended up driving far less than study participants who did not get the reward — a finding that suggests that the U.S. could reduce many car trips if existing auto-centric incentives were altered.