Traffic engineers saying that they can predict freeway travel times 20 years in the future accurate to within 1-2 minutes should be laughed out of the room.

And yet we base multi-hundred million dollar transportation investments around just this pseudoscientific analysis.

These analysis are based on Travel Demand Models that typically assume a 1%/year increase in traffic ad infinitum.

They ignore the possibility of *any future policy or land use changes,* taking for granted that everything will be the same forever...

Except with more driving.

They represent an absolute worst-case scenario, designed to scare officials into shoveling more money toward capacity expansion, uber alles.

Engineer: "The 2040 no-build scenario would increase travel times from 10 -> 30 minutes."

Electeds: "Well we can't have that. Build it."

No other policy interventions can be imagined first.

Peak hour freeway tolling? Nope, that won't happen
VMT charges? Negative
Transit lanes with high-frequency buses? No way
More housing where people actually work? You've got to be kidding

We need a radical shift toward "policy before concrete" planning when it comes to cars.

No more free, ever-widening roads. We need to take the literal hundreds of millions of dollars *still programmed* for freeway expansion, and dump it toward transit service...

...along with all the incumbent policies to facilitate it, such as bus lanes, car tolling, bike infrastructure, and housing near job centers.

The *only* way to fix traffic is to remove the need to drive for every trip.