Highway traffic in Britain: The effect of road capacity changes

Abstract

Altres ajuts: Financial support from Pasaporte a la Ciencia (Convocatoria No 5-2019, FOCO SOCIEDAD - Reto 4: Desarrollo Urbano Sostenible) of the Colombia Científica Program and COLFUTURO (programa crédito-beca 2019)

This paper provides a theoretical framework to study the relationship between expanded road capacity, traffic volumes and increased economic activity. We build on Anas (2024) to show that increased traffic volumes do not necessarily lead to congestion if adjustments in economic factors, such as population or employment, are not substantial. We test our predictions obtaining key estimates with data from Great Britain between 2001 and 2020, and adopting a shift-share instrumental variable approach. We find that the elasticity of vehicle kilometers traveled to road capacity improvements is positive and statistically different from one across different specifications, while the elasticity of population and employment is positive but smaller than 1. In our framework this implies that the cost of driving does not increase above initial levels, resulting in higher consumer surplus through changes in travel demand and time savings.