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Regrettably, clumping leads to crowding: the more people an area houses, the greater the competition for its scarce resources,
遺憾的是，聚集帶來了擁堵：一個區域住了越多的人，稀缺資源的競爭越激烈，
from seats at a hot new restaurant to space on public roadways.
從一家很火的新餐廳的座位到公路上的空間。
Each new arrival enhances a city’s magic but also adds to congestion.
每一位新成員提高了城市的魔力，但是也增加了擁堵。
Cities grow until costs outstrip benefits.
城市一直會增長，直到成本超過了收益。
New transport technologies are not useless.
新的運輸科技不是無用的。
Mass-transit railways and highways allowed big cities to get bigger.
鐵路和高速路公共交通讓大城市成為更大的城市。
But their congestion-easing benefits inevitably proved temporary.
但是，它們緩解交通擁擠的好處證明是必然短暫的。
When the New York subway extended into northern Manhattan, it became practical to live far from the dirty, expensive, crowded downtown area,
當紐約的地鐵延伸到曼哈頓北部時，住在遠離骯臟、昂貴而又擁擠的市中心的地方，
while still enjoying access to the city’s social and economic benefits.
同時仍舊可以享受擁有城市社會經濟福利，這樣的生活就變的實際。
So the city’s population rose—a lot—leaving New Yorkers once more cheek by jowl.
因此，城市的人口增加了很多——使得紐約客更加密密匝匝地擁擠。
A post-war highway-building boom in America yielded explosive growth in city suburbs.
美國戰后大量高速路的修建帶來了城市郊區的爆發式增長。
Cities once again found their equilibrium, however, as the suburban land rush led to road congestion, raising the cost of living far from employment centres.
城市再一次找到了均衡，然而，由于郊區土地熱潮導致了道路擁堵，提高了住在遠離就業中心的成本。
In a paper published in 2011, Gilles Duranton, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Matthew Turner, of Brown University, identified a “fundamental law of road congestion”:
在2011年發表的一篇論文中，賓夕法尼亞大學的GD和布朗大學的MT，提出了“城市擁堵的基本法則”：
namely, that building more highways does not alleviate congestion.
也就是，建更多的高速路并不會減輕擁堵。
Rather, it attracts more residents, leads to more driving by existing residents and boosts transport-intensive economic activity, until roads are once again crammed.
而是會吸引更多的居民，導致更多現有居民開車出行，并且使得運輸密集的經濟活動增加，直到道路再次擁擠。
Driverless cars should cut traffic, other things being equal.
在其他條件相同的情況下，無人駕駛汽車可以減少交通擁擠。
Lower accident rates will mean fewer crash-related hold-ups, while AIs that can pilot cars more closely together will boost road capacity.
更低的事故率將意味著更少的因撞車帶來的耽擱，同時，人工智能可以使駕駛汽車的間距更近，將提高道路運輸量。
譯文來源余興宇
