The argument about roads — Aptitude Question
The argument about roads: Planners once assumed that widening a road would ease congestion. Answer and worked solution on CodeKairo.
- Topic: Reading Comprehension
- Section: Verbal Ability
- Difficulty: Medium
- Time target: 90 seconds
Question
Planners once assumed that widening a road would ease congestion. Decades of evidence suggest otherwise. Additional capacity lowers the effective cost of driving, which draws in journeys that were previously not made at all, until the road is as crowded as before. Economists call this induced demand. The finding does not mean roads should never be built, but it does mean that congestion cannot be engineered away by supply alone.
What does the passage mainly argue?
Options
- Roads should never be built.
- Widening roads tends not to reduce congestion, because extra capacity attracts new journeys.
- Congestion is caused entirely by poor planning.
- Economists disagree about the causes of congestion.
Show the answer and the worked solution
Correct answer: B. Widening roads tends not to reduce congestion, because extra capacity attracts new journeys.
Worked solution
- The passage explains that added capacity lowers the cost of driving and draws in new journeys — induced demand.
- It states directly that this 'does not mean roads should never be built', ruling out the first option.
Answer: Widening roads tends not to reduce congestion, because extra capacity attracts new journeys.
The idea
When a passage anticipates and rejects an extreme reading, that reading is usually offered as a distractor. Watch for the sentence that disowns it.
Shortcut. Follow the 'once assumed … evidence suggests otherwise' pattern: the argument is the correction of the planners' assumption, with induced demand as the reason. Only one option gives both the correction and the reason.
Common trap. "Roads should never be built." — an extreme version that looks like the natural conclusion, but the passage says outright that the finding 'does not mean roads should never be built'.