Do highway widening reduce congestion?

Ioulia Ossokina, Jos van Ommeren and Henk van Mourik
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Jos van Ommeren: VU Amsterdam
Henk van Mourik: Ministry of Infrastructure and Rijkswaterstaat

No 22-010/VII, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: Highway construction occurs nowadays mainly through widening of ex- isting roads rather than building new roads. This paper documents that highway widenings considerably reduce congestion in the short run, defined here as 6 years. Using longitudinal microdata from highway detector loops in the Netherlands, we find substantial travel time savings. These savings occur despite strong increases in traffic flow. The welfare benefits in the short run already cover 40% of the widenings’ investment costs. Our paper contributes to an explanation why countries invest in roadworks even when the fundamental law of congestion predicts that travel savings disappear in the long run.

Keywords: highway widening; congestion; traffic flow; welfare effects; economic activity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H4 R3 R33 R4 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre and nep-ure
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Related works:
Journal Article: Do highway widenings reduce congestion? (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20220010

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