This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 9, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

According to Sam Staley of the Reason Foundation, it turns out we can pave our way out of congestion. We spoke following a Cato Policy Forum May 27th.

Well the interesting thing is that you can't pave your weight out of congestion has become a mantra among certain interest groups, but the truth is not only have we paved our way out of congestion in the past, we have the engineering capability to do it now. It's a question of the

political well and aligning the incentives in the right way. But I don't even think any engineer seriously

believes that you can't pave your way out of

congestion because we've got the space we've got the land and we've got the wealth

and we can do it. Now you talked a little bit about this spider web design.

How many cities have described what that is and how many cities have

tried to work with that?

Well, the concept behind the spider web is that given the complexity of travel patterns today we can no longer think

about designing a road in terms of the standard traditional work-home commute.

That's less than 15% of our trips. Now our trips are so complicated. We have to go outside that hub and spoke wagon wheel system.

And if we look at actually where people actually go with you know taking your kid to the

soccer game then going to the grocery store then to the dentist then maybe to work and

then a a meeting off the regular corporate campus or whatever,

we're really talking about creating a mesh of roads.

And that is what, and we need to think in terms

of a road system that accommodates all those diverse needs that are very unpredictable and very uncertain.

So that's where the spider web comes from.

Spider webs are designed with multiple links

where a spider can get anywhere on the web very quickly.

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