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Washigton DC has the Nation's Worst Traffic

Traffic around here blows...one reason I took a job 6 miles door to door....no more beltway...
 
If you drive into the city I have no sympathy for you. That's what the MetroRail or VRE commuter train is for.
 
yup thank god i work in Reston.. If I ever get a job in DC i'm moving wayyyyyyyy closer
 
yeah when i was looking for a job, i was only looking in places that have the reverse commute. i refused to work in a place where i'd have to be in the normal traffic patterns. i go home down 95 to 495 but i'm going the opposite way for the most part. sometimes there is traffic when it hits 495 though, depends what idiots are on the road that day.

fwiw though, 95 isn't technically dc, it goes around dc.

when i worked in va while living in md, i took the metro for about 2 years. no way in hell i would have driven that.
 
Even if you build more roads and better access more people will then decided its worth it to drive.

It's sort of like roads fill up until people decide the commute by car takes too long.

Boston spent a ton of money upgrading their road infrastructure, but more people just decided to drive to work since the traffic was bearable then.
 
VA: The problem is that in there's no place to buy/live in FFX county... it's packed. Everyone is moving further westward.. there's a lot of new construction happening in Loudoun County. However, the road infrastructure in Loudoun is poor at best. They can't handle the sheer amount of people moving in..It's gonna suck real bad for about 10 yrs.
 
On more than one occassion it's taken me more than 4 hours to drive the 90 miles between Richmond and DC. Never again.
 
The problem with Metro is that it is too damn slow and expensive. Havign to pay for parking at Metro lots kills the equation on using it to save money.

It also does not have long enough reach. Metro itself needs to have a much longer reach without transfers to be useful.
 
MotionMan said:
We're number 2!!! We're number 2!!!

Like I needed someone to tell me that.

MotionMan
Click to expand...

Actually you're number 3 after New York.

(I think, could be wrong).

I knew DC was second place for a long time, not surprised we made it to 1st.


They REALLY need to extend both the Metro and the VRE much further out. Like a good 10 miles each.
 
techs said:
Even if you build more roads and better access more people will then decided its worth it to drive.

It's sort of like roads fill up until people decide the commute by car takes too long.

Boston spent a ton of money upgrading their road infrastructure, but more people just decided to drive to work since the traffic was bearable then.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, there just aren't a lot of alternatives to driving. North American cities are the product of a post-war car lifestyle. The price of housing in the city cores have gone up dramatically, so people got pushed further out into the suburbs, where they could get better value for their money. Of course this required buying a car.

The problem is that public transit was never built to adequately serve these suburbs. It either doesn't run regularly, costs too much (often more than just driving), takes longer, or doesn't serve your area. Usually a combination of several of those.

In my case, I live on one suburban community but commute to another. I work off hours so it takes me 20min to get in. Up to 50min in terrible traffic (rush hour in a snow storm). To take transit, I would have to hop on 3 separate buses, it would take 2hrs on a good day, and cost a hell of a lot more. Now if I worked downtown, it would be 40min in to work versus about 1hr driving during peak rush. But, commuter trains out of my town only run during peak hours. Since I work 3-10pm, I would have to take a bus in, which would take about 1-1.5hrs with all stops. Costing about $16 a day round trip. That's assuming I worked close to the train station and didn't have to take the subway anywhere.

The province's current transit improvement plans are all focusing on building improved service for downtown Toronto. So the growing suburban population has no choice but to drive, and the highways are jammed.

The obvious solution would be to change around the usual 9-5 day. The highways are empty between about 9:30am and 4pm. Though I expect that changing work hours would encounter a lot of resistance. Carpooling only makes sense if you happen to live near co-workers, and that they have the same hours you do. Which is not practical if you're a shift worker.
 
The main reason I decided in 2004 to take a 17% pay cut and work for the local school system. The unpaid hours required to commute in and out of DC no matter whether by the crappy mass transit system, VRE, or car just grind on a person.
 
dbk said:
VA: The problem is that in there's no place to buy/live in FFX county... it's packed. Everyone is moving further westward.. there's a lot of new construction happening in Loudoun County. However, the road infrastructure in Loudoun is poor at best. They can't handle the sheer amount of people moving in..It's gonna suck real bad for about 10 yrs.
Click to expand...



Yea but for those of us in the metro line range it helps our property value. 🙂

Of course they raised our tax value by over 60k this year so even the tax man noticed. 🙁


Linflas said:
The main reason I decided in 2004 to take a 17% pay cut and work for the local school system. The unpaid hours required to commute in and out of DC no matter whether by the crappy mass transit system, VRE, or car just grind on a person.
Click to expand...

I turned down a GS13 to take a job closer to home. Less than 10minute drive to and from work with free parking.
 
Full List:

1. Washington DC
2. New York City
3. Los Angeles
4. Honolulu
5. San Francisco
6. Fairfield County, Connecticut
7. Dallas
8. Houston
9. Austin
10. Boston
 
The funny thing is the DC commute has been miserable since WWII and no matter how much money they throw at it it never changes.
 
Linflas said:
The funny thing is the DC commute has been miserable since WWII and no matter how much money they throw at it it never changes.
Click to expand...

its because the roads in dc are designed in a horrible manner, regardless of the grid it is in. then you have lights every 5 feet, 1 way roads, circles with roads going under them, pretty much all 2 lane roads, where many of the roads are under construction or have people parking on the street to block one of the lanes, no left turn lanes, and then the shitty road conditions all over dc. oh, and then you have the fun times of trying to find parking somewhere or paying $30 for a garage for the day.

and there is no room left in dc to fix it. there is physically no space in many areas to try and expand the roads even if they wanted to do so.
 
Think how bad it would be if they allowed skyscrapers in DC. Its pretty packed now but think if it had more people and cars.
 
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