Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck

This ad is, to put it mildly, misleading. It is misleading on so many levels it is hard to know where to start pulling it apart. At the very least, it is misleading in what it says, what it implies, and what it assumes. It says that new roads can reduce congestion, when we know that new roads almost always increase congestion. It implies that the dramatic surge in vehicle miles traveled since 1980 was not explicitly caused by infrastructure improvements, when we know that it was. Finally, it assumes that congestion wastes fuel, when we know that congestion actually saves fuel—and ultimately is one of the only things that does.