Is Congestion Actually Bad for the Economy?

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The conventional wisdom is that congestion is bad for business: traffic, hard to find parking spots, long commute times obviously depress an economy that could be running faster. At Planetizen, Michael Lewyn argues that the facts don't bear this out:

Both auto and transit lobbies occasionally suggest that without more transportation funding, economic life as we know it will end. If this were true, the most congested regions would be the most economically stagnant ones, and the least congested regions would be booming. But this is hardly the case. According to the Texas Transportation Institute, the two large regions with the lowest per-capita travel delay are Buffalo and Cleveland-hardly economic powerhouses.

Read Lewyn's full argument and see the numbers at Planetizen here: