In Chicago, the Metropolitan Planning Council commissioned a study of the costs of traffic congestion, using more local and specific data than the famous Texas Transportation Institute’s nationwide studies do. They found congestion is considerably more expensive than TTI figures would suggest, but the good part is in two details:

• arterial streets are often more congested than expressways.

• by an order of magnitude, the cost of time lost in traffic congestion exceeds the cost of extra fuel burned, even at peak gas prices.

MPC is too careful to be stampeded into any solution, or indeed into believing that any one solution can deal with this problem. Congestion pricing on expressways is a long-favored notion of economists that is now in use in London. But these two facts suggest that urban designs that make car travel less necessary may play a more important part in relieving congestion than one might have thought.

The full report, released in early August, is available here.