As home to five of the nation’s 20 most congested metro areas,¹ California’s traffic problems are legendary.

According to the American Public Transportation Association, each person traveling by car in peak periods wastes, on average, 62 hours a year—nearly eight full working days—in congestion delays.² For Californians that number is even higher.

Traffic experts agree that there is neither enough money nor enough time to build the roads and highways needed to meet California’s current demands. The cause? Too many cars and too many people.

Consider the problem faced by California during one of its highest immigration periods, from 1984 to 1997. During that time at least 26,000 lane-miles of streets and highways were added to the entire road network statewide; the Interstate highway system grew by five percent; freeways and expressways off the Interstate system increased by 26 percent; principal arterial streets grew 13 percent; and minor arterial streets increased 26 percent. Over that same period California’s population grew 28 percent and the amount of driving increased by 45 percent.

The conclusion? Building roads doesn’t solve our problems, controlling our state’s population does.

¹INRIX National Traffic Scorecard. 2008. http://scorecard.inrix.com/scorecard/Top100Metros.asp
²“Urban Mobility Study.” Texas Transportation Institute. http://www.apta.com/research/info/online/congestion.cfm