A recent poll found that over 80 percent of the residents of Nalmed Province favored a massive expansion of the...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
A recent poll found that over 80 percent of the residents of Nalmed Province favored a massive expansion of the commuter rail system as a means of significantly reducing congestion on the province's highways and were willing to help pay for the expansion through an increase in their taxes. Nevertheless, the poll results indicate that expansion of the rail system, if successfully completed, would be unlikely to achieve its goal of easing congestion, because
Which of the following, if true, most logically completes the passage?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| A recent poll found that over 80 percent of the residents of Nalmed Province favored a massive expansion of the commuter rail system as a means of significantly reducing congestion on the province's highways and were willing to help pay for the expansion through an increase in their taxes. |
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| Nevertheless, the poll results indicate that expansion of the rail system, if successfully completed, would be unlikely to achieve its goal of easing congestion, because |
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Argument Flow:
The argument starts by showing strong public support for rail expansion based on the belief it will reduce congestion. Then it immediately contradicts this expectation by claiming the expansion won't actually work, setting up the need for an explanation of why the popular solution will fail.
Main Conclusion:
The rail system expansion, even if completed successfully, would be unlikely to achieve its goal of reducing highway congestion.
Logical Structure:
The structure presents a premise (poll shows support for rail expansion to reduce congestion) followed by a conclusion that contradicts the expected outcome (expansion won't reduce congestion). The passage is incomplete and requires a reason to explain why the popular solution won't work despite public support and successful completion.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Logically Completes - We need to find a statement that explains why the rail expansion would be unlikely to achieve its goal of easing highway congestion, despite strong public support.
Precision of Claims
The key claims are about activity and outcome: 80%+ residents favor rail expansion AND will pay taxes for it, BUT the expansion won't reduce highway congestion. We need to explain this contradiction.
Strategy
Since we have a contradiction between public support for rail expansion and the predicted failure to reduce congestion, we need to find logical reasons why building more rail won't actually get cars off the highways. We should look for gaps between what people say they want and what they'll actually do, or structural issues that prevent rail from being an effective substitute for driving.
This perfectly explains the paradox. If supporters of rail expansion see 'less congestion during their highway commute' as the primary benefit, it means they plan to keep driving on highways themselves. They want OTHER people to use the rail system to clear the roads for them. Since the supporters aren't planning to switch from cars to rail, building more rail won't actually remove cars from highways, thus failing to reduce congestion.
Information about the 20% who don't favor expansion is irrelevant. Whether half of them have no opinion doesn't explain why the rail expansion supported by the 80% majority would fail to reduce congestion. This focuses on the wrong group of people and doesn't address the core issue.
This shows that congestion has been getting worse over time, but it doesn't explain why rail expansion would be unlikely to solve the problem. If anything, worsening congestion might suggest that people would be more motivated to switch to rail, which would contradict the conclusion that rail expansion won't work.
The fact that expansion requires building dozens of miles of new rail bed doesn't explain why the completed system would fail to reduce congestion. Construction challenges don't indicate that the finished rail system would be ineffective at getting people off highways.
Making rail available to people in suburban locations would seemingly HELP reduce congestion by giving more people rail options. This supports the effectiveness of rail expansion rather than explaining why it would fail to achieve its goal of reducing highway traffic.