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The market in this case is utility enjoyed by people living where they prefer.
...what? I have no idea what you're trying to say. This is just a non sequitur.
People derive enjoyment from certain living arrangements? This seems pretty uncontroversial to me. Some people may like trees, some may like an upper floor on a tall building, some may like having a garage or a big back yard or a pool or a huge basement or space for their mother in law to live with them but in a physically different structure or any of a zillion other things.
The amount of enjoyment is measured by economists as utility. People might or might not trade something they really like like eating less pizza for something else they like like a skinny waist or giving up a short commute to get some housing feature they prefer. These trade decisions are just as much market decisions as trades purely done with currency they just involve trades of utility, too.
Just because no dollars are exchanged it's still a trade which means it's effectively a market, and the same tools we use to study currency based markets work to study utility markets, it's just harder to directly observe prices.
What trades are you talking about? What does any of this have to do with the subject at hand? I'm well aware of what utility is and the fact that people have preferences, but you haven't explained how any of it relates to roads.
People trade more time commuting for a home that has some feature they value with more utility than one that would have a shorter commute.
This is your 3rd comment and you have yet to say anything that is clearly related to the thread topic. There is no market in roads, which are all built by the government. That roads allow some people to live further out (at the cost of preventing other people from living closer in) does not change this fact.
The roads are the marketplace, which facilitate direct utility trading. It's like the government expanding a market place allowing more people to buy food. The goal of building a road shouldn't be to reduce congestion its to allow more people to pay the congestion price to get the home they value more than the time they pay.
Similar to building a larger market or a second market may not reduce the price of wheat or bread the purpose of the expansion was to it increases the volume of wheat or bread sold in the market.
This is a very bizarre way of making your point.
Whether or not you personally think reducing congestion is a good goal, it is a commonly stated goal. I've already addressed the "people sitting in traffic is fine because you can eventually get places" elsewhere.
No it's more the price is set by the people willing to pay it. You may not like it, and that's fine, there are lots of prices that I think are ludicrous, too. But as long as people are willing to pay it, I'm in favor of giving more people the opportunity to pay it. Just like I think Beats are a huge waste of money but I'm fine with retailers building more stores where the prices for beats will be the same as their existing full stores.
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