The traffic congestion con

2022-05-06

The city of Springfield is going to toss $2M towards widening I-44 between 65 and Kansas Expressway. While 2 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the proposed FY22 budget, we should probably expect the city and county will end up spending a lot more once the project is approved and construction begins in 2025.

According to Kirk Juranas, assistant director of Public Works, the widening project coincides with the city’s desire to work on the 13/44 interchange. You know, that diverging diamond interchange that was going to greatly reduce traffic congestion and make life better for those coming to and from Willard? According to Juranas, “[The interchange has] functioned well for us, but we’re beginning to see backups and delays of up to 20 minutes, and we’re currently studying with the DOT and the Ozarks Transportation Organization options to see if we can’t make that better.”

But widening I-44 is going to make things better. Lane widening rarely, if ever, reduces traffic congestion. Adding additional capacity to the road system doesn’t reduce traffic,it creates more traffic. If, hypothetically, 10,000 vehicles per day pass through that stretch of the interstate, adding lanes will only increase the number of vehicles. You won’t have the same amount of vehicles passing through a larger area. It just doesn’t work that way.

To use a local example that’s currently making me angry: building another Starbucks across town won’t reduce traffic at Sunshine and Campbell. It will just create more traffic in another part of town. More people will want their morning coffee at Starbucks, not the same amount (and definitely not fewer).I really don’t understand why the city isn’t more aggressive towards these businesses that essentially use public streets as drive through lanes. If you build a Starbucks next to a McDonalds and Chick-fil-A, you should have to show that you’ll be able to handle peak traffic.

Beyond the inconvenience of more traffic, consider the environmental impacts. Increased traffic congestion is going to bring increased pollution with it.  How will the construction affect the storm water situation in Springfield? Are there plans to improve the system? And what about any green spaces in the area? Will they be filled with asphalt and concrete? Doling Park sits along I-44, will the park be reduced in size?See this survey of the literature on the environmental effects of traffic congestion.

I’m not naïve, I understand that cars and trucks are here to stay and there’s little I can do about it. Our modern economy depends on them and until we succeed in creating a new economy, one that doesn’t sacrifice our lives, the lives of our children, and the planet itself on the altar of money, we will have to deal with cars.I write this on 6 May 2022 after a week long storm system brought several inches of rain to the Ozarks. My neighborhood sewer main is clogged and we have to use as little water as possible for who knows how long.

But creating more lanes isn’t the only thing we can do to reduce traffic congestion. Along with new construction, we must insist the city invest more in bike lanes, sidewalks, green spaces, and public transportation. We should works towards changing zoning ordinances to create denser mixed space areas rather than cookie cutter cul-de-sacs miles away from food and shopping.

Change is always a marathon and not a sprint. Big structural changes require educating the public about what works and doesn’t work. It’s easy to just build more lanes, but to actively plan a city around humans rather than cars is difficult. But in the long run it will be very much worth it.