Decades ago, in Boston, it took me about an hour and a half to go 6.5 miles from home to class in a car. I found that I could do it in well under an hour on a bicycle, although the traffic conditions frequently caused me to arrive with BPS (brown pants syndrome).

A new freeway opened up with proclamations that it would solve all the local traffic problems. My original explanation to all the braggarts, having seen the effect before, was that with a more convenient route more people would choose to drive until the congestion on the new freeway made the same trip about the same time as for the old routes, and there would be no place to park all the additional cars.

It took about 7 months before the first naysayer came back and asked if I could "explain that again, 'cause it seems to be just like you said."

(Accident rates also were higher on the new road for almost a year, until some of the drivers learned that it requires a little different driving style on freeways, even when you're just sitting still on them.)

John