Traffic congestion today is a problem in America that continues to grow. This paper looks at this problem, its consequences and what we can do to cut the time Americans spend in traffic, through the use of pricing and public transportation, and the economic impact of lessening congestion on roads today. Our choices about transportation have helped create a society that is prosperous, but may not be environmentally sustainable over the long term. Traffic congestion has no real concrete definition, but it can be best described as vehicle density, vehicle speed, and traffic volume. Vehicle density refers to the size of the vehicles on the road. Vehicle speed is the rate at which the flow of traffic is moving. Finally, traffic volume deals with how many cars are on the road during a certain time, for example, the amount in 1 hour (Clark, 2000). There are essentially two types of traffic congestion. It can either be either recurrent or non-recurrent. Recurrent congestion is every day rush hour stop and goes traffic, occurring when the capacity of the freeway is exceeded. The initial cause of this type of traffic is that there are too many people rushing along our highways alone in their cars during the peak traffic back-up hours, hence the name 'rush-hour'.
