Over the coming months the Washington Examiner will examine some of the themes that Sam and I address in The Road More Traveled. The first installment came December 26 (sorry no link); the second one comes today:
WASHINGTON – During the 1970s, local elected officials in the Washington area ignored their own transportation planners’ advice and erased dozens of planned highway projects from regional maps ââ?¬â?? while continuing to approve residential and commercial development. The result is the mess of overdevelopment and inadequate roads we face today. To understand why the commonwealth of Virginia continues to allow its most prosperous region to sink into gridlock, let’s look at another part of the country that did things differently. In “The Road More Traveled,” authors Ted Balaker and Sam Staley point out that Houston, the nation’s seventh-largest metropolitan area and home to a major port and more Fortune 500 companies than any other city besides New York and Chicago, faced a similar congestion problem back in 1982.
More here. Related: In this Boston Globe piece, Sam urges Beantown to make gridlock a priority.