Policy: Traffic

Long time Marin residents have noticed that traffic has become much worse over the years. Often, this traffic is blamed on “out of control development”. Residents often fear that building new housing will worsen traffic. Our traffic woes are not due to “out of control” development, as our development rates are very low. Rather, our low rate of development has contributed to our traffic woes.

There is much we can do to alleviate traffic. (See our primer on traffic of this StrongTowns overview.). Most simply, anything that we can do to reduce reliance on cars will help. This includes building housing near schools and jobs, improving public transit and improving active transit infrastructure. This type of housing development is consistent with our project guidelines.

Further, planning our cities around cars is one of the reasons housing is so expensive, as former board member, Warren Wells explains in this persective on parking and housing. Two excellent books on the impact of parking on car usage and housing costs are:

Traffic and Housing News