Our city, like many others, struggles with growth in population. Economic prosperity is a double edged sword. The good is easy to see and well worth the costs. But the costs can be significant and painful to bear. Our city and the surrounding area are struggling to keep up with rapid expansion in population. We're faced with having to not only build new infrastructure to accommodate geographic expansion but also wit the rebuilding of old infrastructure. Old roads and highways which were built to convey a much smaller population from point A to point B can't contain the crush of traffic demanded today.

I think people aren't so inconvenienced by the building of new infrastructure. Every new lane change and detour or delay is only temporary. It's just another step on the way to a fresh new highway which will soon cut commute times significantly. Replacing old roads and highways is a lot harder to deal with. Tearing out old roads greatly reduces capacity in the near term. The pain of renewal is much more acute than that of new building.

In the longer term however, the end investment in infrastructure replacement is a good thing. The trick is to remain focused on the long term and to look past the near term inconvenience and cost. Today's delays will pay off in the future.

As I sat in traffic waiting for workers to empty and move a truck I reminded myself this would all be worth the inconvenience. The old road I sat and watched being partially demolished and carried away could not accommodate the level of traffic demanded of it today. The new road would relieve traffic congestion, which translates into real dollars. I started to think about the ways in which real dollars are lost to traffic congestion.

• First and most obvious to me was the opportunity cost of waiting in traffic. Each of us out there stuck in traffic could not be as productive as we otherwise might have been during that time. There is a real cost, both individually and economically, of that loss of productive time.
• To that cost I added stress. The stress of sitting in traffic, of being late for a meeting or for work, of dealing with each others' ways of dealing with traffic adds up. The stress each of us was under could have a spillover effect on the rest of our days, further diminishing our own personal return on investment.
• Stress also leads to increased health costs. I try to avoid traffic jams as much as possible, but many others out there yesterday probably deal with traffic every day. The repeated stress probably adds up to a less healthy life for many. What's the cost of a less healthy population. Or better, what ways could we better spend all that money we're pouring into health care?
• Wasted fuel. Being the frugal person I am, I couldn't help but think of how many gallons of gasoline were wasting away in idling engines. Worse nearly every engine was powering a climate control system for one single person. If I knew how much gas the average car burned in a minute of idling and multiplied it by the number of cars and by the 45 minutes we all spent sitting there and finally by the price of a gallon of gas, I bet the number I came up with would be surprisingly large.

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• nd all the gas being burned for nothing at all but to play our satellite radio systems and to run our own personal climate control systems also contributed greatly to increased pollution levels. A car at idle is more polluting that one at speed. I can't begin to calculate the cost of the chemical mess our traffic jam created yesterday.
• To all these costs add in the incremental wear and tear on each car and truck. Stop and go driving is the most expensive in terms of wear and tear on a vehicle.
• And how about wear and tear on secondary routes? Many, particularly those who know the area, take to driving surface streets and roads to avoid traffic congestion. Increased traffic on roads not designed for heavy traffic leads to higher replacement costs later on.

As I sat there in traffic thinking up and making my list of all these ways in which longer term costs would be reduced, my stress level dropped just a little. Not much, but enough to help me get through the jam. My hope is when the road is done, the economic benefits will be realized. Our fair city will be a better place to live and each of us will realize real benefits - increased property values, wages and opportunity; along with reduced health and pollution problems - as a result of our investment today.