There was a lot of traffic, and nearly every destination seemed to involve a highway \u2014 frequently more than one. Waze would send us hurtling onto a freeway, then instruct us almost at once to get ready to exit to another. Often that meant crossing three or four lanes of fast-moving cars with little margin for hesitation. Miss your moment, and you didn\u2019t just miss an exit; you were launched onto an entirely different trajectory.<\/p>\n
And the interchanges! The first time I glimpsed one of those vertiginous stacks of concrete \u2014 roadways braided together and soaring overhead in multiple tiers \u2014 I was awestruck. The High Five Interchange<\/a> in downtown Dallas looked less like a familiar transportation system than a feat of extreme civil engineering. What impressed me even more was the calm competence of Dallas drivers, who navigated this airborne latticework as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They merged, exited, and soared with practiced ease, usually at 70 miles an hour.<\/p>\n For all its hyperactive complexity, there was an exhilarating efficiency to the traffic. Cars moved. Lanes appeared where they were needed, and the system had the capacity to absorb the volume. After the initial intimidation wore off, I realized I was having an experience I don\u2019t usually get at home: Driving in Dallas was not miserable.<\/p>\n The contrast between Dallas and Boston isn\u2019t just anecdotal. It shows up clearly in the numbers.<\/p>\n The latest Global Traffic Scorecard from the transportation analytics firm INRIX confirms what Boston drivers already know in their bones. Traffic in New England\u2019s most important city is among the most congested in America. INRIX ranks Greater Boston as the nation\u2019s fifth-worst metropolitan area for driving<\/a>, with the average driver losing 83 hours a year sitting in traffic \u2014 the equivalent of two full workweeks squandered behind the wheel.<\/p>\n Greater Dallas, by contrast, ranks 19th<\/a>. Rush-hour congestion there robs the average motorist of only 44 hours a year \u2014 five hours less than the national average. Expressed in dollars, Boston\u2019s sclerotic traffic costs a typical driver $1,529 yearly<\/a>; the comparable figure for Dallas is just $810.<\/p>\n That contrast might strike some people as counterintuitive. The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, with more than 8.3 million residents, is far more populous than Greater Boston and continues to grow rapidly<\/a>. It has more people, more sprawl, and far more vehicles. Yet highway congestion there is markedly less punishing.<\/p>\n Boston\u2019s traffic woes are so familiar that they have become a journalistic clich\u00e9. News stories refer to the city\u2019s \u201cinfamously clogged road network<\/a>\u201d or its \u201cnotorious road congestion<\/a>,\u201d as though these were immutable geographic features, like the Charles River or the Harbor Islands. The assumption seems to be that traffic misery is simply the price Boston must pay for being Boston.<\/p>\n But congestion is not a law of nature. It\u2019s the predictable consequence of policy choices.<\/p>\n The most important difference between Boston and Dallas is not driver behavior, population growth, or geographical layout. It\u2019s the stark contrast in how the two regions think about highway capacity.<\/p>\n In Texas, planners and political leaders have operated on a straightforward premise: If a metropolitan region is growing, its transportation infrastructure must grow with it<\/a>. Highways are treated not as moral failures or regrettable necessities, but as essential economic arteries. The result is a road network designed \u2014 sometimes extravagantly so \u2014 to accommodate demand rather than suppress it.<\/p>\n In Massachusetts, the governing philosophy has long run in the opposite direction. New highway construction is viewed with deep suspicion, if not outright hostility. Adding lanes is dismissed as futile or counterproductive \u2014 or not considered at all. Instead, the emphasis is on reducing demand for driving and shifting trips to other modes of transportation<\/a>.<\/p>\n That outlook is on display in the coverage<\/a> of Boston\u2019s latest ignominious showing in the INRIX rankings. <\/p>\n \u201cThe congestion \u2026 comes as little surprise to some experts and advocates who\u2019ve long clamored for leaders to wean the city and the state off its car dependence,\u201d the Globe reported. Typical of those experts and advocates is Reggie Ramos, the executive director of Transportation for Massachusetts, who insists that \u201cthe Boston area hasn\u2019t sufficiently invested in modes of transit that can take cars off the road.\u201d When policymakers in Massachusetts talk about relieving traffic congestion, what they have in mind is not making traffic move faster, but making driving less common. Congestion, in this view, is less a signal of insufficient infrastructure than a judgment about how people choose to travel.<\/p>\n But for the overwhelming majority of residents, driving their own cars is the only form of transportation that makes sense. No matter how much they are hectored to switch to mass transit, they have sensible reasons not to do so<\/a>. That was true even before COVID-19 struck. Five years later, transit ridership remains below pre-pandemic levels<\/a>.<\/p>\n For most workers, most families, and most trips, driving is not a lifestyle choice to be corrected but a practical necessity. Dallas accepts that fact and plans accordingly. Boston resists it \u2014 then expresses frustration when the resistance produces gridlock.<\/p>\n To be clear, this is not an argument for mindless sprawl or for replicating Texas-style interchanges along the Jamaicaway. It\u2019s an argument for intellectual honesty. A region that refuses to expand highway capacity while its economy and population continue to demand mobility will get exactly what Greater Boston has: chronic congestion, wasted time, and a daily tax on ordinary life.<\/p>\n One way to see how misguided Boston\u2019s approach to congestion has become is to imagine it applied elsewhere. When the price of ground beef or chicken rises, no Massachusetts official suggests people should be eating less, or sees higher prices as a way to nudge consumers toward vegetarianism. Costly groceries are understood as signs of supply failing to keep up with demand \u2014 a problem to address, not a policy lever to change the public\u2019s behavior. Severe highway congestion, which increases the cost of everyday life, is treated very differently. Instead of being recognized as evidence that roadway capacity has not kept pace with the region\u2019s needs, it is often framed as a tool for discouraging driving and reshaping behavior.<\/p>\n In practice, clogged roadways merely redistribute pain. People with the most flexibility \u2014 professionals who can work from home, people who can afford homes in Boston\u2019s nearest suburbs, commuters with off-peak schedules \u2014 adapt. Everyone else pays the price in lost time, stress, and foregone opportunities.<\/p>\n None of this means that Boston should aspire to Texas-style sprawl, or that every traffic problem can be solved by pouring concrete. Construction engineers in the 21st century have more sophisticated and sensitive options<\/a> for expanding highway capacity than was the case a generation ago. But a modern metropolitan economy cannot function on 1970s highway capacity plus moral scolding. Dallas traffic does not move more smoothly because its residents are especially virtuous or more patient. It moves because its leaders accept growth as a fact and mobility as a necessity. To them, congestion isn\u2019t proof that highways don\u2019t work. It\u2019s proof that people need to go places.<\/p>\n Until Massachusetts decides that mobility is something to be enabled rather than discouraged, Boston will remain world-class in many things. But getting people where they need to go, when they need to go there, will not be one of them.<\/p>\n This is an excerpt from Arguable<\/a>, Jeff Jacoby\u2019s weekly newsletter. To subscribe, visit globe.com\/arguable<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jeff.jacoby@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him on X @jeff_jacoby<\/a>. <\/p>\n