How Much Does Congestion Matter?  Michael Lewyn's picture When
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's suggested that bicyclists'
needs should be accommodated in federally-funded road projects,
the road lobby responded with something approaching hysteria.
Bill Graves of the American Trucking Association wrote that a
more pro-bicyclist policy "would cause an economic catastrophe"
by "hinder[ing] the movement of our nation's goods."(1) The road
lobby's logic seems to be (a) supporting bicycling reduces
funding for roads, which (b) will lead to an increase to road
congestion, thus (c) causing an economic catastrophe.   In this
blog post, I'd like to focus on element (c) of that chain of
logic- the link between road congestion and economic growth. 
Both auto and transit lobbies occasionally suggest (as did
Graves) that without more transportation funding, economic life
as we know it will end.  If this were true, the most congested
regions would be the most economically stagnant ones, and the
least congested regions