LINCOLN DOUGLAS INFORMATION

A call for topics was included in the January, 2010 Newsletter requesting that each school interested in and an intent to participate in LD Debate, to submit topic areas for consideration to the Chair of the LD Committee. The briefs that were submitted were contained in the Newsletter and also available on the NFA web site. All briefs that were submitted were confirmed by the Chair of the LD Committee.

Narrowing Procedures: Based on the ballots that were returned, the Chair of the LD Committee has determined that the LD Topic Area for the 2010-2011 academic year will be as follows:

U. S. MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

The brief for this topic area is still available on the NFA website if you need to refresh your memory. Link

The LD Committee will work on developing resolutions for feedback from the community over the IE-L and other methods of communication. Please contact members of the committee with your suggestions for resolutions to be consider. The time frame will be as follows: The Committee will select five (5) resolutions for consideration by March 30th. A ballot will be sent out on March 30th with the five (5) resolutions. In order for the ballot to be counted, all five resolutions must be rank ordered. The ballots must be returned to the NFA President and received by Monday, April 30th. A weighted preferential voting system with 1st = 5 points, 2nd = 4 points, 3rd = 3 points, 4th = 2 points and 5th = 1 point will be used. Ties will be broken by the President of the NFA, who may at his/her decision, consult with the LD Committee.

Resolution Announcement: The winning resolution will be known only to the President of the NFA until it is announced on August 1st.

The Lincoln Douglas Committee is waiting to hear from you. If your school is involved with LD Debate, this is your opportunity to become active in the selection of the debate resolution for 2010-2011. Dr. Vicki Karns and the other members of the LD Committee are waiting to hear from you. The only way the system works, is if you become involved in the process.

Also remember, your students are engaged in Lincoln Douglas debate. They may wish to be considered in this process of resolution selection. Please take time to include them in your consideration and discussion of resolutions.

Lincoln Douglas Committte for this year is:
CHAIR: Vicki Karns, Tournament Director Suffolk University
Ray Quiel, Council Member Eastern Michigan University
Nichelle McNabb, Elected Member Otterbein University
Kelly Larson, Elected Member Missouri Southern University
David Trumble, Elected Member St. Anselm College
Elizabeth Mullins, Student Member Western Kentucky University

Should be an interesting year covering an important issue. Given the reform of health care this year we can probably be assured there will be little action on health care next year. I believe this was a previous college or high school topic – I’ll try to dig up some information. Your thoughts?

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What is Critical Thinking? The Center for Critical offers a few diffferent definitions on their webpage. For me, I think it’s best summed up as the ability to think clearly and rationally. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.

A critical thinker is one who, when confronted with a stressful situation, can think through their thoughts and pause before making rash decisions. In debate, it involves not necessarily answering the argument with the most knee-jerk reaction but pausing a moment to evaluate the different options one has in responding to the argument. A good critical thinker understands the interaction of many different arguments with each other. A critical thinker will see where contradictions might happen between different arguments made at different points in the debate.

Secondly, a critical thinker is one who can think rationally during the debate – a person who makes logical arguments that appeal to the audience and offer the most persuasive case for their side. Bill Sparks, former director at Cerritos College, argued that spread debate is the antithesis of critical thinking. That when confronted with a debater using spread (by which I mean, dumping as many arguments as possible in response to position) he immediately wondered if he or she had any critical thinking skills. Rather than employing spread he taught his students to use their critical thinking skills to present the best arguments rather than all the arguments. So rather than respond to a topicality position with 30 answers – some of which may or may not apply to a particular position, choose 5 arguments that directly refute and counter the position. Explain those 5 arguments more in depth and justify the importance of each argument both in refutation of the position being made and the entire debate. That would show the judge much higher order critical thinking than just spewing out every possible answer.

It’s easy to defend the debater using spread as simply being smarter. That rather than coming up with only 5 responses to a position the debater used their critical thinking to come up with 30 arguments. That the debater making more arguments necessarily used more critical thinking to come up with more responses. However, I don’t think that’s true at all. I don’t think it’s hard to come up with 30 answers to any position. It’s deciding which of those 30 answers, in this particular debate round, with this particular judge, are the best answers, that employs the greatest level of critical thinking skills. As a judge I would much rather hear five nuanced and well explained answers to a position than 30 blipped arguments that require me, as a judge, to draw connections between the original argument and the refutation.

One example of this is the lack of signposting when responding to arguments in a debate. As a judge I detest debaters who say “on topicality, here are my 30 answers” and proceed to make all different types of responses to different parts of the topicality position. Answers 1,3,5,19,20-22 all deal with the standards debate, answers 2,4,6,8-14 all deal with the violation, and the rest deal with the voter. Strategically, the debater is likely trying to obfuscate the debate and try to ensure that the affirmative debater misses one of those answers. In the 2AR then, the debater will make the connection between dropped argument 21 and the lack of a response to the 3rd standard. For me, this is bad debating and shows a lack of critical thinking skills. It’s playing the game of debate as we’ve discussed before.

I think the same line of thinking can be applied to running topicality every single round. Sure, there are enough competing definitions of transportation infrastructure that you could probably run it against any case. However, do you need to? Is it in your strategic interest? A critical thinker will examine the situation and choose to run topicality whereas someone who defaults to running it every round is likely just following the script rather than applying their critical thinking skills to the round. Are there alternative arguments that would be a better use of the debater’s time? In front of this particular judge is topicality a losing issue anyway?

Third, critical thinking requires reflective thinking. This is the area that debate trains the best in my opinion. Because we split debates into constructives and rebuttals, debaters are forced to evaluate what is happening within the debate itself in order to give themselves the best chance of winning. You need to be able to take a step back and evaluate the round – what positions am I winning – what positions is my opponent winning? How can my positions earn me the ballot? A big component of critical thinking is the idea that you can examine the different points of view on an issue. Most novice debaters are only able to see the debate through the prism of their own perspective – hence, why so many novice debaters do not understand why they lost the debate. Reflective thinking, on the other hand, enables a debater to see the round from the other debater’s point of view and – perhaps more importantly – from the point of view of the judge. One of the best activities that you can do as a college debater to understand the different points of view would be to judge at local high school debate tournaments. As a judge you will see that the two debate teams often are seeing the round very differently from each other – and from you!

Another way that debate requires reflective thinking is that you must evaluate what is and is not working in your debate rounds. Following a tournament analyze where and how you lost each debate round. Furthermore, analyze where and how you won each debate round. This will give you a good idea where the strengths and weaknesses of your case are to help you in future rounds. If you keep losing to topicality it’s time to write out some better answers – or maybe find a new case?

Finally, critical thinking requires independent thinking. Independent thinking in debate means that you do your own research – pure and simple. When you have research and developed your own case you will be much more successful in the activity. As we’ve discussed before I’m perfectly fine with brand new students using camp/outside evidence for the first few tournaments in order to get familar with the activity and what using evidence looks like in a debate. Beyond that I think students are losing out on one of the most important benefits of the activity – research and critical thinking skills. It does not take much critical thinking to run evidence/cases that someone else has written for you. It takes incredible amounts of critical thinking to find articles, cut them into position, use those in a debate, and win debate rounds. Beyond any trophy that you may win in a tournament that skill will last you a life time and be incredibly valuable.

In sum, critical thinking is one of the most important skills in the 21st century and one that debate can teach extremely well. However, debaters, judges, and coaches must make choices to promote their critical thinking skills in debate. It’s been almost 7 years since my last competitive debate round and I can attest that the critical thinking skills I learned in debate are still valuable today.

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Plus, you can build big monuments in the middle!

Anyone running this? Anyone have good ideas on the neg?

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all the preparation is wasted. opp strategy is always Topicality, procedurals, and counterplans. the debate doesn’t start until the 2nd speech.

at least thats what it seems like.

If true, I think this is a very damaging to both the future adoption of the event by schools and the entire rationale for having NFA-LD debate.

As a school considering adding NFA-LD to my program this vision of the activity is not very enticing. It seems to privilege experience of debate “games” over topic specific knowledge. If true, it wouldn’t matter how much research I did on any particular topic but instead how well I know how to answer a generic more-or-less made up for debate position. It also defeats the point of having a single resolution for the entire season if the research one conducts ahead of the tournament is of little use.

As coaches and judges I think we need to evaluate what paths we are encouraging our students to take when competing in NFA-LD. If the comment is true, by rewarding debaters who ignore the case debate we may be ultimately sowing the seeds for reversing the tremendous growth of NFA-LD in Southern California.

While I never like absolutes given that each round is unique and dynamic, I think debaters who make no pretense of debating case (even with analytics) are avoiding the core of the debate and should rarely, if ever, be given the win. Debate can and should be more than just a robotic answering of arguments and the “flow sheet.” If so, why even have a live competition? Just submit your arguments ahead of time and judges will evaluate what briefs should win.

I think we can also have a more-or-less sliding scale as the season develops – sure, at the start of the year students will have little specific neg evidence but by this time in the year negative debaters unprepared with specific case arguments should be penalized.

What are your thoughts and impressions? I’ve gotten much the same impression as the anonymous commenter on the state of NFA-LD and it’s really making me question my continued support for NFA-LD as a tournament event… I can do only so much as a judge – this is a question not about what individual judges or coaches can do but about the culture of the activity and what is rewarded.

I hope we can keep this discussion civil…

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This tournament will feature four preliminary rounds breaking to octafinals – all 3-1 records should clear.

NFA-LD Entry List – Open:

• Azusa Pacific University – Open NFA-LD – jacob crooks
• Azusa Pacific University – Open NFA-LD – Ryan Loofbourrow
• Azusa Pacific University – Open NFA-LD – Adam Daley
• Azusa Pacific University – Open NFA-LD – Sarah Breslin
• Creighton University – Open NDA-LD – Nick Tanner
• Creighton University – Open NDA-LD – Landon Ross
• El Camino College – Open NFA-LD – Robert Maxwell
• El Camino College – Open NFA-LD – Shouhei Ichimiya
• Modesto Junior College – Open NFA-LD – Richard Birlew
• Modesto Junior College – Open NFA-LD – Robert Birlew
• Pasadena City College – Open NFA-LD – Nolan Pack
• Point Loma Nazarene University – Open NFA-LD – Ian Sharples
• Rice Univ. – Open NFA-LD – Julie Duong
• Rice Univ. – Open NFA-LD – Paul Ernster
• Rice Univ. – Open NFA-LD – Kern Vijyavargia
• Truman State – Open NFA-LD – Christian Johns
• Truman State – Open NFA-LD – Dylan Clark
• Truman State – Open NFA-LD – Elizabeth Hatting
• Truman State – Open NFA-LD – Sarah Backhaus
• Truman State – Open NFA-LD – Susan Taylor
• University of California, Los Angeles – Open NFA-LD – Nick Matthews
• University of Oregon – Open NFA-LD – Hank Fields
• University of Oregon – Open NFA-LD – Matt Gander
• University of Oregon – Open NFA-LD – Michael Belcher
• University of Oregon – Open NFA-LD – Aaron Marineau
• University of Reno-Nevada – Open NFA-LD – Matthew Hogan
• University of Reno-Nevada – Open NFA-LD – Travis Salley
• University of Reno-Nevada – Open NFA-LD – Elia Pirtle
• University of the Pacific – Open NFA-LD – Emily Sheldon
• University of the Pacific – Open NFA-LD – Will Chamberlain
• University of the Pacific – Open NFA-LD – Sarah Hamid
• USAF Academy – Open NFA-LD – Andrew Gallion
• USAF Academy – Open NFA-LD – Jeff Williams
• USAF Academy – Open NFA-LD – Matthew Hendrickson
• USAF Academy – Open NFA-LD – Nathanael Tousley
• USAF Academy – Open NFA-LD – Stephen Beaton
• Western Kentucky University – Open NFA-LD – Frank Murdock
• Western Kentucky University – Open NFA-LD – Kaleb Jessee
• Western Kentucky University – Open NFA-LD – Sarah Spiker
• Western Kentucky University – Open NFA-LD – Max Tagher

NFA-LD Wiki team list:

There are 14 schools entered; however, five of them do not have wiki pages. Please, if you have any intel about what the missing schools are running, start a wiki page and post your knowledge to help better facilitate the preparation process as we move closer to next weekend.

The following schools have information on the wiki:

Azusa Pacific: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/Azusa+Pacific+University

Creighton University: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/CreightonUniversity

Point Loma: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/Point+Loma

Rice University: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/Rice

Truman State: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/Truman+State

University of California, Los Angeles: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/UCLA

University of Nevada, Reno: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/UNR

University of the Pacific: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/University+of+Pacific

US Air Force Academy: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/USAFA

Western Kentucky: http://nfacaselist.wikispaces.com/Western+Kentucky

Field Analysis

This year’s field is pretty deep, and the race to elimination rounds will be cutthroat. I would expect the out-of-state teams to do well – UNR, USAFA, and WKU all field excellent debaters and should have not problem securing outround spots. University of Oregon is actually new to LD, I believe, so I have no idea how they might fare (although if their success in parli is any indication I wouldn’t underestimate them). I’m not as familiar with Truman or Rice, but it would be prudent to prepare for them regardless.

For in-state schools, University of the Pacific will be dangerous as always. Rumor has it that yours truly is an okay debater. I think my target audience is familiar with the local Socal schools for the most part, so you know who stands a good chance of breaking. (If not, you can always download the latest Season Sweeps to get a good picture).

Tournament Prep Advice:

With such a large field, preparation might seem rather daunting. But it’s doable if you put in time and effort. Here are some tips to help you prepare.

- It is impossible to adequately prepare a strategy for every conceivable argument. Instead, you should focus on prioritizing your work. You can speed up the process by delegating work among your teammates – if you don’t overlap on assignments, your squad can achieve optimal efficiency.

- Your affirmative should always be your top priority. Have answers prepared, inherency updated, topicality blocked out. I can’t stress this enough – the case is your fortress, and you do not want to be caught off-guard and end up with a few breaches in your proverbial stone walls.

- Focus on strengthen your generic positions next. Rifle through the wiki and find out what kind of specific link stories you need to cut. Prepare some generic counterplans that can solve most affirmatives with a net benefit. Make sure your topicality shells actually make sense. (And if you are still reading camp evidence, discard it. I’m serious. Do some original research for once.)

- Lastly, you can cut specific negative strategies to specific cases. Simply head over to the wiki, compile cites and/or plan texts, and start putting together evidence to counter these cases. This is extremely time-consuming, but it’s far better to have some juicy solvency takeout cards available than to have to muddle around with just generics and shoddy analytics every round. Also, let me emphasize something: LD is NOT PARLI. There is an evidentiary standard in policy-based formats and it drives me absolutely crazy when debaters choose to ignore it.

- For small teams of only one or two people, preparation is hard. You just need to work at it. I can empathize with you – I am UCLA’s only LD debater and thus I do 100% of the work. Of course, I also border on being obsessive-compulsive, so I will probably average about eight to ten hours a day cutting cards over the next week. (Note: only one part of that sentence was an exaggeration). Most of that effort will go unused, but the educational benefits that can be derived from doing all that research are phenomenal, and that’s not to mention the competitive edge that it gives you.

- Good luck, and have fun!

- Nick

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In order to be accepted for consideration, the topic area must be in the form of a 1-2 page brief which includes:
1. A statement of the significance of the topic area in current events;
2. A statement of why the topic is interesting, challenging, and/or provocative;
3. A statement of the perceived educational value of the topic area for debaters;
4. A brief bibliography of selected readings (5-10) that capture the nature of the controversy surrounding the area; and
5. Contact information should the committee need further clarification.
Remember, in order for a brief to be accepted, it must meet all of the above qualifications.

I think the best thing we can do now is start searching for the 5-10 readings that capture the nature of the controversy in space exploration right now. Once we have those 5-10 we should be able to craft 1-3 pretty easily. Nick has actually already done a lot of the work in his comment to the poll post. Remember that you are limited to 1-2 pages so this needs to be brief rather than exhaustive.

I know that the high school topic in 1990-91 was “Resolved: that the United States Government should significantly increase space exploration beyond Earth’s mesosphere.” That year, if I remember correctly, the topic was amended after it was announced to add “mesosphere” because the literature base was just too much without “beyond Earth’s mesosphere.” But remember that at this step we’re not proposing a resolution – just a topic area.

If you find a particularly good article regarding space exploration please post it in the comments.

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Panelists discussed the need for a national freight vision as critical to the future economic health of the country given that the Gross Domestic Product is expected to double over the next 20 years. That has been forecast to happen with a concurrent increase in freight expected in the Gulf of Mexico region by 2020 due to the widening of the Panama Canal. Congestion is a growing concern because it drives up the cost of goods and has a direct effect on the consumer.

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NFA-LD is a one-on-one policy debate event. By policy debate I mean that there is a single resolution for the entire season centered around a possible course of action a specific actor can or can not take. This year, the policy topic is centered on the United States Federal Government (often abbreviated USFG) reforming transportation infrastructure. So throughout the year debaters present arguments for or against reforming our transportation infrastructure. This is different from parliamentary debate that includes a variety of debate case styles (fact-value-policy) and changes resolution for each debate. In NFA-LD you’ll be debating the same resolution at every tournament in every round.

Now that may seem like it will get really boring really fast. But the beauty of the topic is that it’s sufficiently broad (some may say too broad) to allow some freedom for debaters to pick what area of transportation reform they will defend. For this year’s topic, my interpretation is that debaters can choose from reforming roads, rails, air, or the port systems. So while you may be debating “transportation reform” each round the specific action you debate can vary tremendously.

The other significant difference between parliamentary debate and NFA-LD debate is that debaters are expected to research and present quoted evidence (called cards since they used to be presented on 3×5 index cards). Since you know the topic ahead of time you are afforded the opportunity to research and prepare arguments that rely on published quotations from experts. Thus, while parliamentary debate generally focuses on a debater’s own reasoning, NFA-LD asks that debater’s substantiate that reasoning with qualified evidence. That’s not to say debaters in NFA-LD can not make their own arguments (often called “analytics”) but just that for the most part, if two debaters present arguments and one is backed up with quoted evidence and the other is only an analytic, usually the quoted evidence carries more weight.

NFA-LD debate is also highly structured with very specific rules. These rules are an attempt to create a level playing field for all debaters – create a shared expectation of what the event will look like so all debaters are prepared. The rules also set out a vision for the event as a communication oriented debate format. In contrast to other debate formats which place a strong emphasis on argumentation alone, NFA-LD debate tries to be different. For me, this is the strength of the event. You will learn different, equally important skills, by competing in NFA-LD as opposed to other formats of debate. While CEDA/NDT may emphasize the quantity of evidence, NFA-LD emphasizes the balance between argumentation and presentation.

The first step I recommend when beginning the event is to start reading as much on the topic as you can. You could just type “transportation infrastructure” into google and have fun with 102 million results. You can also go to the research tab above and click on any of the topic specific sites which can guide you into understanding the debate topic. The next step is to decide on your affirmative case. What do you want to do to reform transportation infrastructure? You need to come up with your plan – and build your case. You can ready more on that process here.

If you’re here at this site it’s likely because you will be competing in NFA-LD in the near future – congrats! I think you’ve made a great decision to improve your argumentation, public speaking, and critical thinking skills. I’ll be trying to post at least twice a week on this site to help promote NFA-LD so I hope this will become a valuable resource. Please feel free to add your voice in the comments section of the posts – we’d love to have a diverse set of opinions – it is, after all, debate =)

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My initial thought is that this is a perfect example of reforming the infrastructure. Currently, highways are not required to have broadband – this reform will require them which will greatly boost internet speed and access.

This seems like a perfect case to “break” in outrounds to try to sneak past an opponent =)

Any thoughts?

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Here is a disadvantage I’ve been mulling over in judging some rounds this year and thinking about the topic - increased congestion. I want to kind of walk through the process of writing the disadvantage as opposed to simply posting a file for you to use. As I mentioned on the affirmative case construction lecture, I’m a big believer in getting something done now and then improving it. I’m not worried at this point if these are the best possible cards on this topic. The disadvantage can always be improved later. The important thing now is to get the disadvantage written.

Step 1: Coming up with a shell.

The first thing I recommend when writing a disadvantage is to write down a rough shell of where you think the disadvantage is going. This is where if you do parliamentary debate your skills of coming up with positions on the fly will serve you well. Here is what I came up with:

Thesis: their plan will make congestion worse on freeways

Uniqueness:
Currently transportation policy focused on adding highway capacity to reduce congestion

Link:
Their plan reduces (a) focus on highways (ie, rail cases, port, air) (b) reduces funding for roads (ie, shift money from roads to rail, public transit buses)

Internal Link:
Decreased funds means worse roads and more congestion

Impact:
wasted money, deaths from accidents, bad economy

Step 2: Research

I then started doing research on congestion and found these two great sources:
Texas Transportation Institute Urban Mobility Report 2009 and the Federal Highway Administration Traffic Congestion and Reliability Report from 2005.

Step 3: Cutting Cards

I quickly started cutting cards and ended up with these 17 cards. The CardCutter is still available on the site although I’m going to be working on improving it this summer. Remember that you’ll want to include as much of the citation as possible since the first time you read the card you should include the full author, his/her credibility, and title/source.

Step 4: Coming up with a shell

Placing them into the shell I get this quick and dirty disadvantage that took me probably about 1 hour to finish. The internal link is atrocious but that can be improved. The idea is that I now have a foundation to work off. As I keep up on research and reading about transportation policy I’ll probably find better cards to take the place of this evidence.

You also now have something to run against many possible cases. It may not be the best position but it’s something and judges will appreciate that effort.

Here is the disadvantage:

A. Uniqueness

Congestion is being dealt with in the status quo – at least
stabilizing
Schrank & Lomax 2009
[David; Tim | Texas Transportation Institute Urban Mobility Report 2009, p.online | 07/01/2009 |
Accessed 01-02-10 ~ http://tti.tamu.edu/documents/mobility_report_2009.pdf !DJC]
Congestion, by every measure, has increased substantially over the 25 years covered in this report. The most recent two years of the report, however, have seen slower growth or even a decline in congestion. Delay per traveler – the number of hours of extra travel time that commuters spend during rush hours – was 1.3 hours lower in 2007 than 2005. This change would be more hopeful if it was associated with something other than rising fuel prices (which occurred for a short time in 2005 and 2006 before the sustained increase in 2007 and 2008) and a slowing economy. This same kind of slow growth/decline over a few years occurred in the early 1990s when spending and growth in the high- tech and defense sectors of the economy declined dramatically. The decline means congestion is near the levels recorded in 2003, not exactly a year remembered for trouble-free commuting.

B. Link

1. Their plan focuses transportation policy on one area of _[say area]_
2. Congestion solutions require balanced and diversified approach
Schrank & Lomax 2009
[David; Tim | Texas Transportation Institute Urban Mobility Report 2009, p.online | 07/01/2009 |
Accessed 01-02-10 ~ http://tti.tamu.edu/documents/mobility_report_2009.pdf !DJC]
We recommend a balanced and diversified approach to reduce congestion – one that focuses on more of everything. It is clear that our current investment levels have not kept pace with the problems. Population growth will require more systems, better operations and increased number of travel alternatives. And most urban regions have big problems now – more congestion, poorer pavement and bridge conditions and less public transportation service than they would like. There will be a different mix of solutions in metro regions, cities, neighborhoods, job centers and shopping areas. Some areas might be more amenable to construction solutions, other areas might use more travel options, productivity improvements, diversified land use patterns or redevelopment solutions. In all cases, the solutions need to work together to provide an interconnected network of transportation services.

C. Internal Link

Efforts to reduce congestion limited by funding
Chester County Planning Commission, accessed 2009
[Highway page, p.online | no date given | Accessed 01-02-10 ~
http://www.landscapes2.org/Transportation/transIssuesHigh.html !DJC]
Efforts to reduce traffic congestion and improve highway safety are limited by the availability of funding. While funding levels have actually increased in recent years, the buying power is less because of dramatic escalation in construction costs. The construction cost index has increased 100% since 1996. Funding levels have not kept pace with the rate of material inflation. The effect of this funding shortage has been a backlog of capital projects, higher priorities to system-maintenance, increased pressure to scale back capacity-adding highway projects, and increased interests in alternative financing including roadway tolling and asset privatization.

D. Impact

1. Congestion costs us 4.2 billion hours and 87.2 billion dollars

Schrank & Lomax 2009
[David; Tim | Texas Transportation Institute Urban Mobility Report 2009, p.online | 07/01/2009 |
Accessed 01-02-10 ~ http://tti.tamu.edu/documents/mobility_report_2009.pdf !DJC]
Congestion is a problem in America’s 439 urban areas, and it has gotten worse in regions of all sizes. In 2007, congestion caused urban Americans to travel 4.2 billion hours more and to purchase an extra 2.8 billion gallons of fuel for a congestion cost of $87.2 billion – an increase of more than 50% over the previous decade (Exhibit 1). This was a decrease of 40 million hours and a decrease of 40 million gallons, but an increase of over $100 million from 2006 due to an increase in the cost of fuel and truck delay. Small traffic volume declines brought on by increases in fuel prices over the last half of 2007 caused a small reduction in congestion from 2006 to 2007.

2. Congestion hurts economic growth

Federal Highway Administration 2005
[ | Cambridge Systematics, Inc. Traffic Congestion and Reliability, p.online | 09/01/2005 | Accessed
01-02-10 ~ http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/congestion_report/congestion_report_05.pdf !DJC]
The nation’s local, regional, and national transportation systems play a vital role in creating access to goods and services which sustain and grow our nation’s economy. Planners and economic development experts recognize that congestion is an economic development issue because it thwarts business attraction and expansion, and reduces the quality of life for residents.

Any thoughts on the Disadvantage? Anyone running something similar? Have any research or articles to improve the cards?

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