Our own Allen Muchnick is featured at Bloomberg.com today in an article about northern Virginia’s transportation mess, and Virginians’ failure to raise money to solve the problems.
Business leaders are concerned that transportation issues will stifle the area’s economy.
The article cites a study placing the Washington area second to Los Angeles in having the nation’s worst traffic. I disagree! Such studies are based on mythical averages, not real people’s lives. To this southern California native, northern Virginia’s traffic seems much worse. Several people I’ve known who moved to NoVA/DC from “the OC” felt the same way. Southern California offers more options in where to live and work, and more routes between them, making it easier to avoid oppressive commutes.
1 response so far ↓
1 Allen Muchnick // Mar 26, 2008 at 8:39 am
The Texas Transportation Institute’s annual nationwide report on traffic congestion overstates the impacts of congestion by ignoring viable travel alternatives such as carpool lanes, subways, cycling, and walking. In addition, your comment that “Southern California offers more options in where to live and work, and more routes between them, making it easier to avoid oppressive commutes” probably just reflects your much greater familiarity with that region’s alternatives to enduring the gridlock. NoVa is nowhere as miserable as SoCal, if only because it’s substantially smaller.
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