Single correct option
Directions: The passage below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Urban planners have long assumed that adding lanes to a congested highway relieves traffic. But a robust body of evidence, dating back decades and confirmed across dozens of cities, shows the opposite: new road capacity is quickly absorbed by "induced demand" — drivers who previously avoided the route, took other roads, used transit, or simply made the trip less often now return to fill the new space, until congestion returns to its earlier equilibrium. The lane-widening has not solved the underlying problem; it has merely relocated the moment at which the road returns to being full.
Urban planners have long assumed that adding lanes to a congested highway relieves traffic. But a robust body of evidence, dating back decades and confirmed across dozens of cities, shows the opposite: new road capacity is quickly absorbed by "induced demand" — drivers who previously avoided the route, took other roads, used transit, or simply made the trip less often now return to fill the new space, until congestion returns to its earlier equilibrium. The lane-widening has not solved the underlying problem; it has merely relocated the moment at which the road returns to being full.
- A. Cities should stop building highways altogether, since road construction is always a wasted investment regardless of circumstances.
- B. Adding highway capacity typically fails to reduce congestion in the long run because suppressed and diverted demand returns to fill the new space.
- C. Traffic congestion is primarily caused by drivers who make unnecessary trips that could easily be avoided.
- D. Urban planners have historically ignored public transit as a solution to highway congestion.
Show answer and solution
Answer: (B) Adding highway capacity typically fails to reduce congestion in the long run because suppressed and diverted demand returns to fill the new space.
The passage's core claim is that induced demand causes widened highways to refill and return to congestion — this is exactly captured by option B. Option A overstates the passage into a blanket policy conclusion it never makes; C misidentifies the cause as unnecessary trips rather than induced demand; D is not discussed at all.
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