I take issue with the lead sentence in "Bonus miles for big Utah freeway job" ( Tribune , Dec. 10) about the Interstate 15 construction project that adds two lanes each way from Lehi to Spanish Fork. Reporter Brandon Loomis suggests these improvements will "provide traffic relief" to the thousands of commuters currently clogging the interstate. Unfortunately, this assumption is flat out wrong.

Studies over the past 50 years have repeatedly documented that adding lanes to an existing roadway does nothing to alleviate traffic, and in many cases they make congestion worse, hardly a desirable result along the already pollution-plagued Wasatch Front. In Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream , Andres Duany notes that when Robert Moses started expanding the highways around New York City in 1939, he was confounded by the fact that traffic around the city got worse rather than better. This pattern has continued around the U.S., especially in greater Los Angeles.

Taxpayer money would be better spent on initiatives like public transportation that encourage individuals to live not farther away from their workplaces but closer to heavily populated transit areas. Expanding highways has the opposite effect.

Richard Badenhausen

Salt Lake City