Traffic Jams? You Want Traffic Jams?
22nd January 2014
There is a certain irony in the fact that Chris Christie is being pilloried because his aides caused a traffic jam that lasted for four days. Across the country, liberals have caused traffic jams that have lasted for years, and they are still trying to make them worse.
Take the Twin Cities, where I live. Like some of those New Jersey residents, I have to cross a river to get to my office. This takes an average of 15 minutes a day longer than it should because our regional planning authorities have deliberately undersized all of the area’s highways. Liberals do this to combat “sprawl,” which means living where you want to. Most people, here as elsewhere, prefer to live in the suburbs. In addition to causing an enormous amount of economic waste, undersizing highways also makes houses in the outer suburbs less valuable, and houses in the city and inner-tier suburbs more valuable. Where do you think most of the people who make regional planning decisions about highways live? While impossible as a practical matter, it would be fascinating to compare the man-hours lost due to anti-”sprawl” policies enforced by liberals with the man-hours lost over a four-day period in New Jersey because drivers from Fort Lee were delayed in crossing the George Washington Bridge.