Texas built the world’s widest highway to end traffic. With 26 lanes, it’s still a traffic trap

Houston’s Katy Freeway on Interstate 10 was expanded in the 2000s into a 26-lane corridor, including main lanes, frontage roads, and managed toll lanes.

The goal was to ease bottlenecks, but traffic stayed heavy and congestion worsened after the widening.

The freeway has become a widely cited example of the limits of road expansion as a traffic solution in fast-growing car-dependent cities.