T4America Blog

Month of Action Week 3: Ending the Congestion Con

With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. This week, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways just makes traffic worse.

With the Senate writing long-term transportation policy right now, our Month of Action is going full-steam ahead. Thank you if you took last week’s action to send a message about the Complete Streets Act to your members of Congress.

For Week 3, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways doesn’t work. 

In the name of “congestion relief,” we’ve spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars widening and building new highways. Even though we widened freeways faster than population grew, congestion got worse—144 percent worse, as we found in our report last March, the Congestion Con. 

It’s time to stop wasting billions on projects that make our problems worse.

Use the Congestion Con to tell your Senators how much freeway growth and congestion increased in your urbanized area. 

(1) Find the percent growth in lane miles and congestion (technically known as “delay”) for your urbanized area here.

(2) Personalize this tweet to your Senators: 

“Our metro area increased lane miles by XX% yet congestion increased by XX%. Expanding highways doesn’t work. Let’s end the #CongestionCon. @your senator @your senator t4america.org/maps-tools/congestion-con/” 

(3) Find your Senators’ Twitter handles here. (If you don’t have Twitter, you can send this message as a short email.) 

Thank you for taking action! It’s time for a long-term transportation bill that actually connects us to the jobs and services we need, equitably, sustainably, safely, and affordably. Thanks for helping us get there.