"The Ideology of Traffic" moves traffic, but creating wealth is something else entirely.

Which ideology is it? Traffic or wealth creation? Charles Marohn breaks it down: The Ideology of Traffic (Strong Towns).

Folks like Irv Stumler and David Aebersold should be reading. They might learn something.

They won't ... so they don't.

This weekend, there was an article that appeared in the NY Post titled The Real Reason for New York City’s Traffic Nightmare. I know the Post is tabloidy; the story contained all anonymous sources and lacked even a rudimentary level of fact checking that you’d find in an actual news story. Still, it fits the ideology of the traffic engineering profession and I saw the piece widely distributed. Here’s a quote:

“The traffic is being engineered,” a former top NYPD official told The Post, explaining a long-term plan that began under Mayor Mike Bloomberg and hasn’t slowed with Mayor de Blasio.

“The city streets are being engineered to create traffic congestion, to slow traffic down, to favor bikers and pedestrians,” the former official said.

“There’s a reduction in capacity through the introduction of bike lanes and streets and lanes being closed down.”

Let’s apply a contrasting value system to this quote, not one based on moving traffic but one based on building wealth. Here’s how each of these statements could be rewritten:

Ideology of Traffic: The city streets are being engineered to create traffic congestion.

Ideology of Wealth Creation: The city streets are being engineered to make property more valuable, encourage investment and improve the city’s tax base while reducing its overall costs.

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Ideology of Traffic: The city streets are being engineered to slow traffic.

Ideology of Wealth Creation: The city streets are being engineered to improve the quality of the space for the people who live, work and own property there.

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Ideology of Traffic: The city streets are being engineered to favor bikers and pedestrians.

Ideology of Wealth Creation: The city streets are being engineered to favor the access of high volumes of people over the movement of comparatively small volumes of automobiles.

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Ideology of Traffic: There’s a reduction in capacity through the introduction of bike lanes and streets and lanes being closed down.

Ideology of Wealth Creation: There’s an improvement in the quality of the place and it’s corresponding value through the introduction of bike lanes and the closing of some streets and lanes.

Before the Suburban Experiment, cities were built with an ideology of wealth creation.