The state government of Victoria has announced a plan to link east link freeway with the Tullamarine freeway. Both of these freeways are currently at gridlock during peak hours. Linking them will only move to congestion from one to another and neither has the capacity to the string peak hours. The dynamics of this are very simple, the situation will simply keep getting worse and worse and the new freeway will be as congested as existing freeways with a very short period of time.
The causal diagram shows these interrelationships.
The dynamics of building new freeways has been well known for some time. as traffic congestion rises, governments build more freeways. These new freeways provide, in the short term at least, increased access to residential areas on the city fringes. This in turn stimulates housing growth in these areas which places increasing pressure on the freeways which increases congestion.