25 reasons not to widen freeways

Our neighbors to the West are wrestling with a question of widening a freeway through their downtown corridor. It’s not much of a news topic; stories like this have been an afterthought for most cities and citizens for the past 50 years — when traffic gets bad we widen roads.

But this story is different. In Portland, the people are pushing back, and they’re using some newly acknowledged information to make their argument. Among those arguments: the growing realization that wider roads don’t reduce traffic or congestion.