If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again
Road advocates, such as Wendell Cox, Mike Jackson and Don Reid, see little future in mass transit. They believe the only answer to congestion is to build bigger and more highways. We have been doing precisely that in abundance now in large cities across the U.S. for the last 60 years. Los Angeles started their freeway system in 1940. A brief ride on the L.A. freeway system will demonstrate how “successful” it has been in relieving congestion.

Yet these highway proponents will still tell you that the next road widening or the next interstate built will be the solution to all our problems. Normally when you try to solve a problem and it doesn’t work after trying and retrying it many times, you apply a new and different solution to solve the problem. Someone once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome.

It may be that not every mass transit project or every new urban community will be an instant success. Certainly every new transit corridor built cannot be expected to eliminate congestion. However, we will at least be moving in the right direction. That direction is a new and more enlightened direction, based on the fact that depending entirely upon automobiles has failed to solve our problems in the past, and is not solving them now. Therefore it is highly unreasonable, if not completely irrational, to think that continuing on the same course will solve our problems in the future. How long will it take to convince the Wendell Cox’s of the world that they need to look back long enough to see where we’ve been and see where we’re headed?