As mentioned in the linked study I've always had the understanding that increasing road capacity doesn't do anything for congestion because more people start driving. There are many others that come to the a similar conclusion you can see below:
The real question is who even wants to be driving in a city? It seems like one of the most stressful experiences possible. More places need to build public transport infrastructure that actually works rather than building even more roads...
That would definitely be a lot nicer but it still leaves the issue of spending thousands per year financially as well as hours of your life commuting to do something you could do just as well if not better from home anyway. People who work shifts already are at work far too long but then they have to tack on another 2-3 hours travelling which they're not even compensated for.
From what I've seen of NYC they have much bigger issues than this. The article mentions a city official said under 100 restaurants would be affected (which should always be taken with a grain of salt, especially from one in NYC) but the carbon emissions from less than a 100 restaurants making pizza has to be immeasurable compared to the many other sources of pollution in NYC and worldwide contributing to climate change which they refuse to address.
Seems like another way of trying to justify the bureaucracy funded by that $106Bn a year budget and gouge even more money from NYC residents. I'm sure it would be much better spent literally anywhere else.
I think it is true that the best people are the first to go, at least based on my first hand experience. The forced rto was on of the nails in the coffin that got me to finally leave. I wasn't the only one to go and without trying to sound egotistical I was one of the best people there so it was easy to get another job that was fully remote. I've kept in contact with a few ex co-workers who are still there and the only reason they're staying is because they don't currently have the experience / knowledge to go somewhere else.
I recently started a new job and went from working hybrid to fully remote. The department I worked in was spread across two different locations with most of the team working from the one I wasn't at. There was a huge push by management to force people back into the office more and more; I'd often end up sitting there alone all day while people from sales had calls and meetings on speaker at max volume along with an expensive, stressful commute on a packed train either side.
This was one of the things that pushed me to finally look somewhere else (there were lots of other issues) and there's no way someone could get me to go back to pointlessly working in an office, spending hours per day and thousands per year commuting unpaid just so they can exercise further control while ironically reducing productivity significantly.
https://www.thecgo.org/research/does-expanding-highway-capac... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/58x8436d https://www.researchgate.net/figure/How-Road-Capacity-Expans... https://www.smartertransport.uk/does-building-more-roads-red... https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
The real question is who even wants to be driving in a city? It seems like one of the most stressful experiences possible. More places need to build public transport infrastructure that actually works rather than building even more roads...