Recently, Harris County shocked a lot of people by proposing to expand the Katy Freeway to 22 lanes, four more than the existing plan to add seven lanes to the 11-lane freeway. As most transportation experts know, the long-term result of expanding freeways is almost always to increase the number and length of trips that people take, adding more pollution and doing nothing to relieve the congestion that is driving citizens – particularly suburban citizens – crazy.

Aside from U.S. Representative John Culberson and Judge Robert Eckels, there aren’t many people in positions of power left in the United States who believe we can build our way out of traffic congestion. Elected officials promote massive highway projects not only because there are astonishing amounts of money that flow around them, but also because traffic congestion is now right up there with crime in the top concerns of citizens. People hate it, and the bad news is that there is probably no cure.

As recent Congressional testimony from Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution confirms, “The most important thing to understand about peak-hour traffic congestion is that once it has appeared in a region, it cannot be eliminated or even substantially reduced. There is no effective remedy for traffic congestion.”

Common sense suggests that if we build more freeways or widen the ones we have, we will gain relief. In fact, what happens is that people who are not now using them will begin to do so, and they will quickly fill up again. This horrible concept is called “induced demand.”

At the recent American Planning Association conference, a speaker asked his audience of about 400 professional planners how many of them thought expanding highways would reduce congestion. About 10 percent raised their hands. The rest voted for “false.”

While we cannot reduce congestion, we can improve mobility and ease of access, and there is more than one way to do that. The first and most important is to consider how we might arrange our world in ways that would allow us to get rid of some of those vehicle trips altogether. You only need a car or bus or train when things are too far away to comfortably walk. About 80 percent of our trips are really just errands, so if you live three miles or nine miles from a grocery store or restaurant, you are probably going to want a machine to move from place to place. But if you live or work three blocks from most of the daily amenities, you might just walk or even ride a bike.

Still, many trips will require transport, and transit systems provide the main alternative to cars. Effective mass transit must be linked to development patterns, and most major planning discussion and studies in the United States and even in our region recognize this. Many people would choose to live near public transit stops, and indeed in cities where there is a modern, fast, convenient transit system, property values are often higher near the stops.

So the central organizing principle of development, as we add 2 million more people to our region in the next 15 years, should be to lay down that grid of activity centers connected by public transit systems, and to spur mixed-use development around them.

But that is not the central principle here in Houston. One problem we have is that there is no significant organization or coalition informing the debate over transportation policy in the region. In other cities, nonprofits advocating on behalf of clean air, natural resource preservation, social equity, and other quality of life issues come together to bring powerful financial and political power to the discussion. So far, it has been impossible to bring such groups together in Houston.

The stunned silence that greeted the Katy Freeway announcement pointed a profound finger at the great vacuum that exists here for a serious coalition advocating rational, cost-effective transportation and planning solutions for our future. If such a coalition had even half the power of the groups that fought against the Main Street rail project, someone would now be calling for a vote on this billion-dollar boondoggle that is soon to become one of the nation’s largest freeways.

David Crossley is president of the Gulf Coast Institute, which leads the Livable Houston/ Smart Growth Initiative in the region.