Suburbs and Highways

Tyler Cowen did a post the other day asking how much highway construction matters for suburbanization and concluding “I am not suggesting that highways do not matter, but the extent of the influence is maybe not as large as many people think.” This will, I suppose, depend on what it is we think “many people think” about the issue. It’s pretty clear, though, that the trend toward suburbanization is pretty strong across the developed world even though there’s a lot of policy diversity.

What I wonder about US highway construction is what kind of impact its had on what the suburbs look like and what commuting patterns look like. On Long Island, for example, there’s both the LIRR and also several limited-access highways. Consequently, some people commute on train and others by car. There’s also an extent to which the suburbs have little “downtowny” areas around the train stations, but it’s mostly in a more typical suburban pattern. In other suburbs of other metro areas, there are more limited-access highways but no commuter rail whatsoever. In those areas, a greater proportion of people commute by car and there are no station-centered suburban towns. Presumably on Long Island instead of building those highways, the money could have been invested in more and better commuter rail service and suburban Long Island would look different from how it does. Admittedly, absent knowledge of climate change it’s not clear to me why you would have thought that would be a good idea, which is presumably why it didn’t happen.

Particularly if it’s not the existence of highways that inspires people to move to the suburbs it seems like there might be a great deal of possible flexibility in terms of how suburban transportation works. I suppose a system built around excellent trains, normal roads, and congestion pricing in the center might actually make relatively long-distance commutes more attractive than they generally are right now and inspire an even more spread-out growth pattern.