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Almost any large city has real bad traffic. I know Atlanta has REAL bad traffic along with Seattle. Seattle and Atlanta almost always come out near the top for worst traffic. I think their both top 5.
This is according to Forbes. The top two worst freeways/interchanges are in LA. However, if you read the article, the slideshow of worst interchanges show the 101/405 interchange, but this article was written over a year ago and since then the interchange has been fixed and now runs quite smoothly I would say.
1. Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Calif.
2. San Francisco, Oakland, Calif.
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Atlanta
5. Houston
6. Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Tex.
7. Chicago.
8. Detroit
9. Riverside, San Bernardino, Calif.
9. Orlando, Fla.
11. San Jose, Calif.
12. San Diego
So...anyone notice anything odd about which freeways are constantly packed. Not that most are in LA or anything, but I thought the 10 in LA was bad. I didn't know it was bad everywhere else too. It causes traffic problems in LA, Phoenix, Houston, and I'm sure others.
Almost any large city has real bad traffic. I know Atlanta has REAL bad traffic along with Seattle. Seattle and Atlanta almost always come out near the top for worst traffic. I think their both top 5.
i've been to seattle a lot and really don't find the traffic all that bad - it's way better than atlanta, houston and DC, IMHO. we were downtown once and headed back on 405 towards Everett, in the rain (duh) at 5pm on a Friday. We were warned "it's gonna take FOREVAH!". Took about 35 minutes. There are a lot of slowdowns, but I've never seen complete and utter gridlock like in the other places I've mentioned.
The one saving grace for Chicago is that it built a good transit system. I hate traffic, so I just ditched my car about a year after I moved here. Cut down on the stress a LOT.
The traffic is horrible, but I can't even imagine what it would be without the trains and buses.
The Chicagoland area has 717 miles of passenger train service, and 374 train stations.
There are also 394 fixed bus routes in the area, and combined the services deliver well over 2,000,000 passenger trips on an average weekday. If you take it to work and back, that's around 1,000,000 people a day who use the bus or a train. Figure a lot of those people would have had to drive alone, you're probably talking 600,000 cars taken off the road each day...going to work AND coming back.
Imagaine if cities didn't have public transportation. The roads would be gridlocked 24 hours a day. That's why i have a hard time digesting the opposition to transit we have in the States by its citizens as well as the Feds and State Governments. PT doesn't solve traffic congestion by any means but what it does offer is an alternative to driving. BTW - Gas prices are predicted to go up to $4.00 this summer.
How does NYC fit this? Manhattan is just a parking lot on an island with tall buildings surrounding it.
Much of the traffic on Manhattan itself is actually taxis and commercial traffic (trucks and vans used for small businesses). Plus, there's 20 million people in the NYC metro. Some of them are going to drive, either by choice or necessity.
Public transit does alleviate congestion somewhat, nevertheless, the latter is an unavoidable fact of life in any big city. I actually think public transit's greatest benefits lie in other areas.
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