Love the framing, like there's more work to wring out of your wage slaves if you fix traffic congestion.

42h per year is less than 1h per week. Even if they're working from home 3x per week this seems to be very conservative to 15 min each way. Where's the news here?

They will just have to wait until teleporters are invented cause we can't have them working from home. Think of the commercial property owners!

If traffic didn’t hinder growth then growth would produce more traffic until it eventually hindered growth.

You can increase that growth capacity by investing in public transit and though.

Capitalists are missing out by being greedy selling cars when public transit would collectively benefit them. It’s a local optima.

This is kinda three different problems, or three effects from one problem:

1. Being stuck in traffic has a negative impact on health, quality of life in general
2. Being stuck in traffic has a monetary cost for deliveries and others who have travel as a significant part of their work, e.g. how easy it is for plumbers to get around to customers and warehouses and the like
3. Being stuck in traffic can have terrible consequences for emergency services

The solutions, of course, are a mix of negative incentives to drive like congestion and parking pricing, and positive incentives to not drive, like investing in transit, cycling, mixed use and at least a certain level of urban density to be able to support transit, services and not have biking and walking be unfeasible or undesirable because of long distances.

hey don't infringe on the u.s freedom to enjoy a good old fashioned traffic jam

I was told bike lanes cause traffic. We need more car lanes. Just one more lane bro!

Oh man, those researchers sure will be upset when they find out how much time I 'waste' a week arriving to work early and then just languishing while waiting for work to start. It's around 250 hours a year. (and even better, I'm there an hour early specifically to avoid traffic)