Arizona Rail Passenger Association

“Road building a dead end for congestion” was the headline in the San Jose Mercury News on November 14. A report by the Texas Transportation Institute says that Silicon Valley would need to add 84 miles of freeways every year just to keep traffic jams from getting worse. The report concludes that adding more highways won’t ease gridlock and that a national approach is needed to ease the country’s worsening traffic.

In the study’s traffic analysis, “Los Angeles again took dubious honors for the 16th straight year as the region with the worst traffic…”

“If you want to add lanes and add lanes, that’s like loosening your belt to cure obesity,” said James Corless of the Surface Transportation Policy Project in San Francisco. “And if you really want to look at the end of that road, it’s called Los Angeles.” (Read the The Texas Transportation Institute report) In response, the Surface Transportation Policy Project issued an analysis of the TTI data that shows that roadbuilding is an ineffective congestion relief strategy. The STPP study compares metro areas that have added extensive new road capacity with those that have not, and finds no difference between the two groups in the rise in traffic congestion.

Describing STPP’s findings on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Roy Kienitz, Executive Director of STPP, said, “We looked at the cities that added a lot of highway capacity and those that did not, and the only difference between the two was that those in the first group spent a lot of money.”

At the 1998 ARPA Awards Dinner, to be held 11 November,

• Jerry Colangelo will receive the second annual George R. Loulan Award in recognition of his support of Passenger Rail in the Private Sector.
• Mary Peters, ADOT Director, will receive the second annual Byron A. Nordberg Award in recognition of her support of Passenger Rail in the Public Sector.

The public is invited to attend this fund-raising event.