Every few months, Indian cities announce a new flyover, road widening, or expressway with the promise of “decongesting traffic”. Yet, for the daily commuter in metropolitan cities, congestion only worsens. The paradox is simple: Building more roads often creates more traffic, not less.

Economists Matthew Turner and Gilles Duranton termed this the “Fundamental Law of Road Congestion”: Vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) increase nearly in proportion to lane kilometres added. Meta-studies show elasticities of about 0.5 in the short run and 0.8 in the long run, which means a 10% increase in road capacity leads to nearly an 8% rise in traffic over time. This dynamic is also explained by the Braess Paradox, which shows that in complex networks, adding a new road can perversely worsen congestion because drivers’ individual route choices make the overall system less efficient. In the Indian context, the problem often manifests differently. When congestion is relieved at one junction through flyovers or traffic engineering, it merely shifts the bottleneck to the next signal or choke point, offering no respite to the long-distance commuter.

A NITI Aayog study estimated that just four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata — together lose ₹1.47 lakh crore ($22 billion) annually to congestion through wasted fuel, lost productivity, and health costs.

Vehicle ownership growth only compounds the problem. By 2024, India had nearly 260 million two-wheelers and 50 million cars. With such numbers, adding more asphalt simply induces more trips. We also need to stop treating roads as if they are consumer goods that can be endlessly produced; they are finite public spaces whose unchecked expansion comes at the cost of safety, equity, and liveability.

The consequences are not limited to wasted time. Congested, poorly managed urban roads amplify both accident risk and pollution exposure. To tackle congestion,........

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