New Albany knows all too well how highways ruined cities.

"If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves...There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding."
-- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Interstate 64 and the Sherman Minton Bridge severed New Albany's west side and destroyed the city's first public park. Whether "ruined" is the best word to describe the situation, it can be posited with confidence that the interstate irreparably altered for the worse this place where we live, while enabling suburbanization out yonder.

We've managed to take back some of what was lost, though the interstate's perpetual noise and visual blight is always there to remind us of the price we've paid.

Philly Fed economists: Here’s how highways ruined your city, by Darryl C. Murphy (Plan Philly)

No one should be denied a good taco, but the Vine Street Expressway has often deterred Jeffrey Lin from visiting a nearby taqueria for lunch.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia economist channeled that frustration into a working paper about the negative effects of highways on cities.

“Just the experience of getting there is so unpleasant,” he said. “That was kind of one early inspiration for thinking what are the effects of highways on cities.”

Lin and senior economist Jeffrey Brinkman took a broad look at how highways have contributed to suburbanization, and the subsequent decline of U.S. cities during the 20th century ...

"Highway engineers dominated the decision-making. They were trained to design without much consideration for how a highway might impact urban fabric."

If we retained the public transportation infrastructure we possessed 100 years ago, Bulldog fans could have taken the train to Indianapolis and back for last night's championship game.

This article makes at least two points that we should never tire of emphasizing.

First, that "gas taxes have never fully paid for highways," even though we insist on believing it's true.

Second, "An unmistakable part of the equation was the federally supported program of 'urban renewal,' in which lower-income urban communities — mostly African-American — were targeted for removal."

That's history, folks.

Highways gutted American cities. So why did they build them? by Joseph Stromberg (Vox)

... So why did cities help build the expressways that would so profoundly decimate them? The answer involves a mix of self-interested industry groups, design choices made by people far away, a lack of municipal foresight, and outright institutional racism.

Yes, please: "Induced demand" as necessary corrective to road-building lobbyists' Goebbelsian propaganda.

Wouldn't it be nice if perhaps once in a person's lifetime, a conventional local news outlet -- News and Tribune, Courier-Journal, Business First, WDRB, Insider Louisville -- would accompany the breathless transcribing of an equally breathless press conference or news release from an eternally breathless corporate-financed, road-building lobby group with a simple explanation of induced demand?

Which in these instances, would act as the antidote to the breathless propaganda being dispensed by the usual paid-up suspects?

Have an opinion about traffic? You're entitled, but henceforth, when you air it, I'll be asking you if you're familiar with induced demand.

It's going to be on the test, folks.

What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse, by Adam Mann (Wired)

... As a kid, I used to ask my parents why they couldn’t just build more lanes on the freeway. Maybe transform them all into double-decker highways with cars zooming on the upper and lower levels. Except, as it turns out, that wouldn’t work. Because if there’s anything that traffic engineers have discovered in the last few decades it’s that you can’t build your way out of congestion. It’s the roads themselves that cause traffic.

The concept is called induced demand, which is economist-speak for when increasing the supply of something (like roads) makes people want that thing even more. Though some traffic engineers made note of this phenomenon at least as early as the 1960s, it is only in recent years that social scientists have collected enough data to show how this happens pretty much every time we build new roads. These findings imply that the ways we traditionally go about trying to mitigate jams are essentially fruitless, and that we’d all be spending a lot less time in traffic if we could just be a little more rational.

I'm not exactly certain why we should take seriously a trucking and logistics lobby group with key personnel that includes a former Clark County GOP party chairman, although it's obvious that the group's announcements have Ron "Fluff the Wealthy" Grooms billing and cooing like a teenager in love with a pin-up girl.

Perhaps we can expect Ron to introduce vital legislation: The Auto-centric Freedom Restoration Act, or some such drivel.

Let's do this drill one more time. When the talking point proposes laying asphalt to solve problems:

"A new report aimed at reducing transportation bottlenecks."

Remember induced demand:

"The fundamental law of road congestion: New roads will create new drivers, resulting in the intensity of traffic staying the same."

I'm not picking on the reporter Finley; his was the first link I copied. No area news outlet did itself any favors with coverage (see Riefenstahl, Leni for historical antecedents).

Plan calls for expanded I-65, I-64 and new Sherman Minton bridge, by Marty Finley (Louisville Business First)

A new report aimed at reducing transportation bottlenecks and improving logistics channels for business calls for the widening of Interstate 64 and I-65 in Indiana and the reconstruction of the Sherman Minton Bridge.

Those three major regional priorities were outlined among 63 needed infrastructure initiatives in "Regional Links: Global Connections," a strategic plan that has been under development for two years by the Southeast Regional Logistics Council. The plan was released during a news conference in Jeffersonville Tuesday morning.