In the latest podcast episode of It Turns Out, host Kara Miller sat down with urban planning professor Michael Manville to tackle one of the most familiar frustrations in modern life: traffic congestion.

Rather than accepting traffic as an inevitable part of city living, Manville explains that traffic isn’t just a nuisance—it “robs you of time, health, and sometimes sanity.” What’s striking, he argues, is that many of the “obvious” solutions people and policymakers reach for, like widening freeways or building new transit lines, often fail to make traffic better in a meaningful way.

The episode delves into the underlying causes of congestion, including how underpriced road space and urban design choices contribute to persistent delays and bottlenecks. Manville highlights transportation research showing that smarter pricing mechanisms — such as congestion pricing that adjusts fees based on demand — can reduce gridlock by encouraging more efficient use of infrastructure. “People oppose it when it’s first proposed. After it’s implemented in the area, people like it. And yet after that happens, it’s uniquely uncontagious,” he notes.

Reflecting on his early experiences in the field, Manville adds, “When I first started studying congestion pricing back in grad school, occasionally we’d get called by a government entity or an elected official who wanted to talk about ideas for reducing traffic. Their reaction when we proposed congestion pricing then was, ‘Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, and don’t ever come back.’ But now, people at least talk about it and even consider it. We’ll take progress.”

Watch the podcast episode on YouTube or listen to the episode on Spotify.