The Amazing Truth About Freeway Congestion

You’d think that if your freeway is clogged up every rush hour, adding an extra lane would reduce the congestion. You’d be wrong.

And an uprising against Oregon state government plans to widen the I-5 freeway here in Portland may end up changing how cities around the country decide to use the hundreds of billions of dollars in highway funds coming to them from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

A recent study of 100 US cities found that — between 1993 and 2017 — billions were spent to expand highway systems’ capacities by…