SAT Reading & Writing · Text Structure and Purpose
A city government's initial traffic study concluded that a proposed highway expansion would reduce commute times by widening the road to…
A city government's initial traffic study concluded that a proposed highway expansion would reduce commute times by widening the road to accommodate more vehicles. A follow-up study conducted after similar expansions in other cities found that wider highways often attracted enough additional drivers that congestion returned to previous levels within a few years, a phenomenon researchers call induced demand.
Which choice best describes the function of the second sentence in relation to the first?
Which choice best describes the function of the second sentence in relation to the first?
Answer and explanation
Answer: D: It introduces research suggesting the initial study's prediction may not hold over time.
The second sentence introduces evidence from other cities pointing to a specific mechanism, induced demand, that could undercut the initial study's optimistic conclusion. D captures that function precisely: raising doubt through outside research, not confirming or opposing outright. A misstates the relationship, since the second sentence complicates the first instead of confirming it. C invents a public-opposition angle absent from the passage. B overstates the finding into an absolute, universal claim the passage doesn't make, since it describes a common pattern, not an inevitable law.
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