Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
The city is reliant on cars because the population is spread out. Those freeways are utilized by commuters in far flung neighborhoods and suburbs. There is no other viable alternative. Houston is not a compact metro with a dense centralized population where mass transit can effectively serve the region as well as freeways. A commuter rail might work for larger suburbs; Woodlands, Sugar Land, Katy, Galveston, etc but there's a lot of politics involved and the city is already expanding light-rail but that's limited to the inner loop area.
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In my opinion it is not lack of highways that's the problem in Houston, but lack of adequate secondary roads available as alternatives. Feeder roads do not provide an adequate alternative if the main lanes are clogged, as they are often worse. The design of the road system also means freeways are required for local traffic, additionally clogging sometimes just for an exit or two.
There has been incredibly little update or improvement to non-freeway arteries in the last 20 years beyond re-striping or cleanup/repaving of a few blocks.
Besides the effect of funneling all traffic to freeways due to lack of connectivity on secondary roads, the secondary road system infrastructure itself is inadequate to hold peak traffic everywhere, and sometimes it is especially worse in the furthest suburbs that still depend on old Farm to Market roads to handle major commuter traffic.