Yet when I visit a small country town with a giant road through the middle, there is still no traffic there. If big roads induce traffic independent of any other factors then this should not be true - the mere presence of the big road should have created traffic.
While I understand there's a really point to this paradox (it really happens), I hate the simplistic conclusion people reach that it is always wrong to make a road bigger. Sometimes you really do need a bigger road. Sometimes you really need more public transport or something else. It's complicated, and we need better models of it. But reducing it to one line slogans doesn't help that.
That's kind of the point made about halfway through the article where he states if you expand a road to 100 lanes you won't ever see any traffic.
In those country towns with a population of 30,000 but a super road through the center that could carry 100,000 people a day the road _is_ the same as if that 100 lane highway had been built in a major city.
In the article they state that there are more factors at work but they do need a title for the article that will draw people to read it.
I think highways like the 401 in Toronto prove that the "100 lane" theory is pretty much bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_401 It's arguably the busiest highway in North America based on a number of metrics, even more volume than LA's perpetually busy Santa Monica Freeway.
They've been expanding it ever since they've built it and in parts it is 25 lanes wide. It's slammed all the time. Traffic jams at 3am aren't unheard of if they're doing road work and it's slimmed down to half capacity.
It was once merely an 8 lane highway, so the idea that tripling or quadrupling the size of a highway magically makes traffic jams go away is so far from the truth.
There's a parallel highway running north of it that's paid by tolls which isn't as busy, but only because they can adjust pricing according to demand.
While I understand there's a really point to this paradox (it really happens), I hate the simplistic conclusion people reach that it is always wrong to make a road bigger. Sometimes you really do need a bigger road. Sometimes you really need more public transport or something else. It's complicated, and we need better models of it. But reducing it to one line slogans doesn't help that.