> The authors seem to suggest that demand for roads is infinite, as expanding roads merely increases the number of trips people choose to make, thus infinite expansion will result in infinite trips.

Agree. They literally claim this with “increasing lane kilometers by 1% will increase VKT by 1.03%” but subtly acknowledge that this fundamentally doesn’t make sense with the hand-wavey “any feasible increase in roadways will have no impact on congestion”. Keyword feasible.

The real law doesn’t seem to be that congestion rises to meet capacity but that no one will ever fund enough road expansion to make peak congestion low.