Highways and Sprawl: Is There a Connection?
Conventional wisdom holds that where you build a road, development follows. Activists have taken hold of this idea as a springboard to advocate for less construction and congestion relief in Ohio. Brett Hulsey of the Sierra Club, for example, has said, “More roads lead to more traffic like bigger pants tend to lead to more weight gain.”[1]
But does the addition of antisprawl rhetoric to the highway debate really help us make better decisions about transportation policy? Ohio residents and policymakers might want to wait before jumping onto this bandwagon. A new study by University of North Carolina transportation planner David Hartgen challenges the conventional wisdom for Ohio.
According to the study, the idea that growth follows pavement does not hold up to the weight of the facts. The preference for areas with lower population density takes place in each of Ohio’s major cities regardless of the presence of new road construction or improvements. Highways do not cause sprawl. “Elected and/or appointee officials,” Hartgen points out, “should approach with caution proposed changes in infrastructure funding policy that offer hope of slowing or stopping sprawl or growth, since such policies are likely to be unsuccessful.”[2]
Ohio policymakers should take a hard look at road spending, like other programs, to ensure Ohioans are getting the best bang for the buck. According to the Ohio Department of Transportation, Ohio has the fourth largest amount of truck freight and the fifth highest volume of traffic in the nation.[3] Maintaining a large roadway network under such conditions is a substantial fiscal burden.
Ohio is on the right track toward careful spending, incorporating cost benefit analysis into its decisions. In 1996, the Ohio General Assembly created the Transportation Review Advisory Council, or TRAC, “to bring an open, fair, numbers-driven system to choosing major new transportation projects.”[4]
Not surprisingly, the review process rests primarily on mobility and transportation issues – not quality of life issues like sprawl. But the growth management crowd is casting doubt on this approach to transportation policy. Bill Miller, the regional planning manager for Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI), a metropolitan planning organization, recently said that, "Traditionally as areas have grown and traffic congestion has worsened, more money was put into the quality of the roads. But now we know we can’t build our way out of it.”[5]
OKI is not alone. According to the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, another metropolitan planning organization, “Urban sprawl is also the result of public policies, many driven by policies established at the federal and state level in transportation, housing, and economic development…public policy has a legitimate part to play in reversing this trend. Such a policy would guide local government decisions to adjust land use decisions and infrastructure investments avoiding actions leading to urban sprawl.”[6]
When considering the consequences of roadways on growth, however, a host of competing factors determine where development takes place. Crime, school quality, open space, traffic, land prices and regulation are just a few. When road building and growth are isolated to determine a correlation between the two, the connection is weak at best.
Dr. Hartgen found little relationship between road construction or improvements and growth from 1990 to 2000. Obviously, this runs quite contrary to the expected outcome. If road building is not driving growth, though, some other force must be doing so.
As it turns out, population density — the number of people per square mile — plays a significant role in future development. Investments in roads have little or no impact on population growth. The logic behind this seems like common sense — development occurs where there is room to grow.[7]
The implication of Hartgen’s analysis for Ohio transportation policymakers is simple: stay the course. Ohio’s policymakers should continue investing in projects that increase mobility for all Ohioans and take concrete steps toward relieving congestion.
Notes
[1] Tanya Albert, “Widening Roads Worsens Traffic Congestion,” Cincinnati Enquirer, 13 January 2000.
[2] David T. Hartgen, The Impact of Highways and Other Major Road Improvements on Urban Growth in Ohio (Columbus, OH: The Buckeye Institute, January 2003), 53.
[3] Ohio Department of Transportation, “Ohio’s Federal Funding Transportation Agenda,” 1. Available on-line at http://www.dot.state.oh.us/budget/Fed_Trans_Fund_March20.pdf.
[4] TRAC Website, http://www.dot.state.oh.us/trac/.
[5] Katie Taft, “Spurning Sprawl,” CityBeat, 17-23 September 1998.
[6] Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, Clean Water 2000 (Cleveland, OH: NOACA, 9 November 2002), 11-12.
[7] David T. Hartgen, The Impact of Highways and Other Major Road Improvements on Urban Growth in Ohio.
