See if you can follow this logic. Raleigh has been building a massive outer beltline for the past decade or so. The northern arc is basically finished. Now there are projections that the northern arc will be congested within another decade. To address the congestion problem, Raleigh is going to add lanes to the road. To pay for the new lanes, they’re going to collect tolls.

Got that? Not only does Raleigh totally miss that building new lanes will just induce new demand, despite concrete evidence of this relationship on the very road at issue, but they also seem not to realize that if they’re going to toll the road, they could simply set the toll at a congestion eliminating rate. Then they wouldn’t need the additional lanes and could use the revenues to build the southern arc (as was the original plan) or, and I know this is crazy, to build a transit system.

We desperately need better federal guidelines for transportation spending and land-use. This is just a joke; Raleigh is wasting taxpayer money.