Critical Reasoning

The heavy traffic in Masana is a growing drain on the city's economy - the clogging of the streets of the central business district alone cost the economy more than $1.2 billion over the past year. In order to address this problem, officials plan to introduce congestion pricing, by which drivers would pay to enter the city's most heavily trafficked areas during the busiest times of the day.

Which of the following, if true, would most strongly indicate that the plan will be a success?

(A) Approximately one-fifth of the vehicles in the central business district are in transit from one side of the city to the other.
(B) Planners expect that, without congestion pricing, traffic in Masana is likely to grow by 6 percent in the next five years.
(C) In other urban areas, congestion pricing has strongly encouraged carpooling (sharing of rides by private commuters).
(D) Several studies have shown that a reduction in traffic of 15 percent in Masana could result in 5,500 or more new jobs.
(E) Over 30 percent of the vehicles in the city's center are occupied by more than one person

OA: C

Can someone please explain why B is NOT the correct answer. Thanks.

lionsshare wrote:The heavy traffic in Masana is a growing drain on the city's economy - the clogging of the streets of the central business district alone cost the economy more than $1.2 billion over the past year. In order to address this problem, officials plan to introduce congestion pricing, by which drivers would pay to enter the city's most heavily trafficked areas during the busiest times of the day.

Which of the following, if true, would most strongly indicate that the plan will be a success?

(A) Approximately one-fifth of the vehicles in the central business district are in transit from one side of the city to the other.
(B) Planners expect that, without congestion pricing, traffic in Masana is likely to grow by 6 percent in the next five years.
(C) In other urban areas, congestion pricing has strongly encouraged carpooling (sharing of rides by private commuters).
(D) Several studies have shown that a reduction in traffic of 15 percent in Masana could result in 5,500 or more new jobs.
(E) Over 30 percent of the vehicles in the city's center are occupied by more than one person

OA: C

Can someone please explain why B is NOT the correct answer. Thanks.

B shows us that in the absence of the plan, the problem is likely to get worse, not that the plan will alleviate the problem. (Imagine that the plan were implemented, and traffic remains the same, or worse, goes up by 4% rather than 6%. Well, the goal of the plan was to reduce traffic, so it's still a failure.)

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:

lionsshare wrote:The heavy traffic in Masana is a growing drain on the city's economy - the clogging of the streets of the central business district alone cost the economy more than $1.2 billion over the past year. In order to address this problem, officials plan to introduce congestion pricing, by which drivers would pay to enter the city's most heavily trafficked areas during the busiest times of the day.

Which of the following, if true, would most strongly indicate that the plan will be a success?

(A) Approximately one-fifth of the vehicles in the central business district are in transit from one side of the city to the other.
(B) Planners expect that, without congestion pricing, traffic in Masana is likely to grow by 6 percent in the next five years.
(C) In other urban areas, congestion pricing has strongly encouraged carpooling (sharing of rides by private commuters).
(D) Several studies have shown that a reduction in traffic of 15 percent in Masana could result in 5,500 or more new jobs.
(E) Over 30 percent of the vehicles in the city's center are occupied by more than one person

OA: C

Can someone please explain why B is NOT the correct answer. Thanks.

B shows us that in the absence of the plan, the problem is likely to get worse, not that the plan will alleviate the problem. (Imagine that the plan were implemented, and traffic remains the same, or worse, goes up by 4% rather than 6%. Well, the goal of the plan was to reduce traffic, so it's still a failure.)

Why A is wrong? If the 20% of f the vehicles in the central business district are in transit from one side of the city to the other, taxing the drivers who enter the city's trafficked area could help reduce traffic in the district center.

Why C is right? Even if congestion pricing helped to reduce traffic in other urban areas, NOT necessarily the strategy will work in Masana.

I notice that in some CR questions some alternatives present some analogies, for example, if taxing companies reduced air pollution in the Boston area, the same will work in NY area- the one presented in the argument - such as the analogy in question (589). If taxing OTHER urban areas reduced traffic, so taxing the central district area will reduce traffic as well, and therefore the answer choice is correct. In the other hand, sometimes, the analogy is irrelevant, so the answer choice is wrong. So, how will I know that the answer choice using this kind of comparison will be right or wrong? The only thing I can think of is using process of elimination. Does that make sense?!

Many tks!