A recent poll found that over 80 percent of the residents of Nalmed Pr

go with C.

d/e - strengthen the argm.

a/b - not relevant to the question at hand

Original Passage:
- 80% of residents favor massive expansion of commuter rail system
- 80% of residents favor the expansion to reduce congestion on highways
- 80% of residents are willing to pay increased taxes to pay for the expansion

I see A,C and E as strengthening the argument for the commuter rail. B seems to refer to half of the 20% who didn't support it--and that appears to be out of scope.

To me, D is the only answer that makes sense. Can someone help clarify?

D is the answer.

We are looking for a reason why the congestion will not be lessened. If expanding the rail system requires the construction of dozens of miles of railbed, then this construction will create additional congestion for commuters during the time of its construction.

The rest of the answer choices do not provide sufficient explanations for why lessening congestion is unlikely if the rail system is constructed.

I agree with (A) for this same reason

A is the only correct answer here! Because this answer shows that many of the people in the poll will still use the highways!

Adding to the explanations already given, let me say that the question talks about poll results and hence we are looking for opinions of the people in the poll rather than facts. So such choices are most likely to be right. If we look at the choices we see C, D and may be E are not really opinions, only A and B are. So we can spend more time on them. We can immediately eliminate B because the numbers given are not significant enough to affect the achievement of the goal.

So if you are pressed for time , you should go for A. Now the reason why A is the correct answer is that as explained in some of the previous posts if the majority of the people think that the major benefit of the expansion is that they can continue using the highway then the goal of easing congestion on the highway cannot be achieved by the expansion of the rail system.

Hi,
I have a doubt regarding option (a). I am not satisfied with the explanation that if people reported less congestion then they will continue to use highways. In the option it is written that, most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience, i.e. people reported this when they were using highways. Nowhere in this statement, the option talks about the intention to continue using highways as a primary source of commute.
Though, I agree that no other option is helping much in the question, but could you please explain in little detail about the explanation.
Also, are such questions good enough to come in the GMAT..?
Thanks in advance.

Hi Sukant,

First of all, this is an official questions and therefore, would have probably appeared in the actual GMAT exams of some test takers. Also, your job in most GMAT CR questions is to find the best among the "five given option statement", not really the best among "ALL possible".

Now, before I explain again why option A is correct, can you please tell me the meaning of option A in your words?

Thanks,
Chiranjeev

I found it as a tricky question. You need to find best of all.

Prethinking : - If after the rail expansion somehow people are not able to use it then it will unlikely to remove the congestion.

A) Most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience.

Most people who favor the expansion of rail system thought that once rail system is developed then there will be less congestion on road so they will still be travelling by road. So most of the people will again be on the road so weakens the argument.

B) Of the less than 20 percent of residents not counted as favoring the expansion, about half claimed to have no opinion one way or the other.

Irrelevant. They are anyway minority

C) The twice-daily periods of peak congestion caused by people commuting in cars have grown from about an hour each to almost two and a half hours each in the past 20 years.

This kind of strengthen the argument. If congestion has grown more then may be rail system expansion can ease it.

D) Expanding the commuter rail system will require the construction of dozens of miles of new railbed.

Irrelevant

E) The proposed expansion to the commuter rail system will make it possible for some people who both live and work at suburban locations to commute by rail.

This kind of strengthen the argument. These people will be coming to city and going everyday so if expansion can take these people out then it can ease the congestion.

So Answer is A

A: What the option is primarily trying to suggest is that People who favoured the motion of applying taxes to ease the congestion basically are interested in experiencing less traffic during their commute on highway, so technically 80% who favoured would continue to use the highway hoping that the others would board for rail travel.

I believe it is the wording that really throws you off with the OA.

when I read sludge 's answer I knew exactly what it was saying

I just could not deduce that 'most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience ' into 'residents are only supporting the measure because they expect EVERYONE ELSE BUT THEMSELVES to migrate from driving to rail while they maintain no intention of doing so too'

any someone please help out on how to do arrive to this statement? To me, A is just restating what was said in the stimulus

The logic of the proposed rail expansion to ease congestion is as follows: (1) Expand rail system --> (2) People use the rail instead of driving on the highways --> (3) Less highway congestion.

On the other hand, the argument (final sentence) states that something in the poll results indicates that accomplishing (1) is unlikely to accomplish (3).

How might accomplishing (1) not lead to (3)? This would be the case if (2) does not happen. In other words, the rail system is built, BUT most people continue to drive instead of using the rail and the highways stay congested as a result.

In answer (A), we more or less find this idea: "Most" of the residents favoring the rail proposal do so because they believe OTHER people will use the rail rather than drive, leaving the highways less congested. They, however, plan to continue driving to work! If that's the case for a majority of residents, then (2) in the logical chain of events will indeed not happen, breaking the chain from (1) to (3).

Does that make sense? Answers (B) through (E) are largely irrelevant.

This is a fun question..but it requires too many assumptions - probably why it got retired. :D

(A) most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience

Remember the goal is "to ease congestion" NOT "to annihilate congestion". Therefore "unlikely to achieve its goal of easing congestion" basically means that congestion has dropped by 0-5%.

For A to be the right answer, we need the following assumptions:

(1) highway commute = personal cars and driving, NOT long-distance buses/crazy taxis - it makes sense that people will take train over bus (literally the case in my city) if train exists.....because DUH, trains are faster. Crazy taxis..well that's just for fun..not relevant.
(2) After building the railway, most people won't switch to that and instead continue to commute in their damn fancy cars.
(3) Very subtle but this question also hedges on the assumption that people in other countries that doesn't speak English knows (1)....which I am fairly sure isn't a good assumption.

TL DR: If you got this one wrong, you're fine. Keep studying, mate.

(A) most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience

A is correct answer
As people who support rail system think that doing so would result in less traffic on highway so it is good for them.But if everyone thinks the same way then whole purpose would be defeated

Premise: A poll shows 80% of ppl favor expanding commuter rail via increased taxes in order to alleviate traffic
Conclusion: The poll shows that this project would not reduce traffic due to __

We need to find what must be true about the polling data for the project to not achieve the goal of reducing traffic.

(A) most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience
-- If most people voted for it but still plan to travel by car then they're expecting other people to use the rail system. Conceivably, this could mean that people without cars would now be able to use public transportation while the same amount of people would remain on the road, thus the plan to reduce congestion would not succeed. Totally misread this one while doing it, yikes.

(B) of the less than 20 percent of residents not counted as favoring the expansion, about half claimed to have no opinion one way or the other
-- doesn't tell us anything useful about why the goal would not be met

(C) the twice-daily periods of peak congestion caused by people commuting in cars have grown from about an hour each to almost two and a half hours each in the past 20 years
-- It sounds nice but actually again doesn't tell us anything about WHY the project would not succeed based on the poll. We have no way to compare whether the rail system could mitigate the rush hour traffic or not.

(D) expanding the commuter rail system will require the construction of dozens of miles of new rail bed
-- Actually, sounds nice again because if there is construction, it might obscure traffic in some areas. But the rail line might not be located near highways, in which case it wouldn't. We have no way to know and either way it doesn't tell us anything about the polling data.

(E) the proposed expansion to the commuter rail system will make it possible for some people who both live and work at suburban locations to commute by rail
-- doesn't tell us anything useful about why the goal would not be met

(A) most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience
>This implies, most of the people who do favour the rail system, still take highway instead of rail post rail expansion. The congestion problem still persists

(B) of the less than 20 percent of residents not counted as favoring the expansion, about half claimed to have no opinion one way or the other
>It doesn't talk anything about congestion factor

(C) the twice-daily periods of peak congestion caused by people commuting in cars have grown from about an hour each to almost two and a half hours each in the past 20 years
>The increase in commute time over the last 20 years dose not convey why rail expansion will not serve the intended purpose

(D) expanding the commuter rail system will require the construction of dozens of miles of new rail bed
>The option dosent negate the benefits of rail or how it will not improve congestion

(E) the proposed expansion to the commuter rail system will make it possible for some people who both live and work at suburban locations to commute by rail
>It doesn't talk anything about congestion factor

Most people are saying (A) is right - Which is true - A is right but the meaning justified is not necessarily the exact meaning.

(A) most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience

(A) has two possible meaning:

1. Most of the people who do favour the rail system, still take highway instead of rail post rail expansion. The congestion problem still persists

or

2. Most (80%) of the people still said that they will somewhat benefit from it and thus, identified it as a secondary benefit. However, there might be a new factor (a new benefit) that is other than the congestion problem which is making them to favor the rail system expansion

B-E are irrelevant answer choices and thus it leaves with A as the best answer as it implies that there's actually other reason to vote for rail expansion that is not related to congestion and that is why it is unlikely to solve the congestion issue, this is talking about what the poll is suggesting not what's going to happen ... two different things ...