Single correct option
Four sentences (1–4) form a paragraph, with one sentence missing. Choose the option that best fills the blank, marked [BLANK], to complete the paragraph coherently.
1. Traffic engineers once assumed that widening a congested road would reduce congestion by increasing capacity.
2. Decades of data from cities that tried this approach tell a different story: new lanes fill up with new trips within a few years, leaving congestion largely unchanged.
3. [BLANK]
4. Consequently, many transport planners now treat demand management, pricing, transit investment, land-use change, as a more durable response to congestion than adding capacity alone.
1. Traffic engineers once assumed that widening a congested road would reduce congestion by increasing capacity.
2. Decades of data from cities that tried this approach tell a different story: new lanes fill up with new trips within a few years, leaving congestion largely unchanged.
3. [BLANK]
4. Consequently, many transport planners now treat demand management, pricing, transit investment, land-use change, as a more durable response to congestion than adding capacity alone.
- A. Road construction costs have risen sharply in most major cities over the past two decades.
- B. This pattern, sometimes called induced demand, occurs because easier driving conditions encourage more people to drive, live farther away, or shift trips from other times or modes.
- C. Public transit systems in many cities remain underfunded relative to road infrastructure spending.
- D. Several cities have experimented with congestion pricing schemes in their downtown cores.
Show answer and solution
Answer: (B) This pattern, sometimes called induced demand, occurs because easier driving conditions encourage more people to drive, live farther away, or shift trips from other times or modes.
Sentence 2 describes the surprising empirical pattern (new lanes fill up, congestion unchanged) and sentence 4 draws a policy conclusion from it ('Consequently'). The blank must explain the mechanism behind the pattern described in sentence 2, bridging observation to conclusion. Option 2 supplies exactly this explanatory mechanism ('induced demand') and its causal logic. Options 1, 3 and 4 introduce related but tangential facts (costs, transit funding, pricing experiments) that do not explain WHY the pattern in sentence 2 occurs, which is what the paragraph's flow requires at that position.
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