Problem SOLVED! Traffic

According to the report, the combination of gasoline and time lost sitting in traffic amounted to roughly $78.2 billion in total cost.  All for traffic.  All because we either don't have enough roads, or simply because we're driving too much.

Though the simplest of all solutions would be a concerted, widespread, grass-roots effort to simply drive less, both by simply living closer to the places you need to drive, and by not driving to places which are reachable by alternate modes of transportation.  Unfortunately, neither of these options are feasible.  Since much of the traffic is caused by people living in the suburbs and working in the city, the people in the suburbs would have to actually move to the city and pay for the social services the city provides.  This would cause the amount of expendable income for the suburbanites/neo-urbanites to drop, and thus would the level of luxury in their day to day life decline.  This is not something that can not be allowed in a country which holds as a fundamental Dream the pursuit of luxury.  Rich people should not be paying for any services for poor people.  If the market wanted poor people to have good schools, its invisible hand would provide them. 

As to the second point, everyone knows that driving is faster than walking or biking.  Regardless of the monetary cost, we should be encouraging our citizens to drive everywhere because it is faster to do so and will leave them with extra time for more productive pursuits like watching Bayer commercials or being proudly apathetic.  The efficiency of the people is of the utmost importance.  So, then, it is not the driving that must be reduced, but the ease of driving that must be improved upon.  We have to find a way to drive the same amount -- or more -- in less total time.

In other words, we must build more roads.  However, we can't just build the roads anywhere.  It would be wonderful if we could simply put up a bunch of new roads in the middle of nowhere and somehow the existing traffic would dissipate across them.  Sadly, I have consulted with a British traffic engineer who told me in certain terms that traffic does not simply disperse evenly across all existing roads.  Apparently, for a road to be effective, it must exist between the driver's point of origin and his destination (please note that I use the masculine pronoun simply as a default and not out of sexism, and also because I believe only men should be allowed to drive and/or own property), or at the very least it must be near one of these two points, such that it allows the driver a greater number of what he called "potential routes."

While I took all of this in, I began to think about all of the substandard housing in this country.  A recent U.N. report set the quantity of Americans who have serious housing problems at 96 million people.  The report defined such problems as one or more of circumstances including "a high cost burden, overcrowding and poor quality shelter."  As the most powerful nation in the world, we should not tolerate anything of poor quality.  We should not allow many people to live in a very crowded space -- it could facilitate the spread of disease and at the very least is an uncomfortable living arrangement.  And, of course, we can assume that any burden, and particularly a high cost one, has a net negative affect on the burdened's quality of life.  It should not shock you in the least that the solutions to all of these problems, as well as the solution to the traffic problem, are one and the same.

We must destroy these 96 million people's homes and build roads in their place.  Your burden is gone, struggling homeowner.  Those who had been overcrowded will learn that it's impossible to feel cramped under an endless sky; the horizon is your roof, now -- enjoy!  And as for those whose homes were of poor quality:  what did you lose, really?  Face the fact that your shelter was visual pollution and a drain on property values.  A road is more valuable that your home, and therefore is a much more efficient use of the real estate.

Naturally, all of the new urban roads will open up plenty of new potential routes for commuters.  This will passively diffuse the traffic and significantly reduce overall time wasted.  Or, as my expert British engineer friend so eloquently put it, "Fewer houses plus more roads equals cruise control."  This one was almost too easy; you're welcome in advance for another problem solved.