Forbes Best Ten Commuter Cities

[2Adam29]

strange that just last year, Omaha was number 1 in a study, and yet they aren't mentioned in this one... 10 traffic dreams (http://www.bizjournals.com/specials/slideshow/34.html - broken link)

[lammius]

That's because the convention center is generating too much traffic!!!

On the up side, though, it seems nearly 2% of Omahaians (is that the right demonym?) use the ped bridge!

[ajf131]

Cleveland actually doesn't surprise me. I am surprised that St. Louis didn't make this list, I am guessing it didn't because right now Interstate 64/US 40 are closed for construction. Plus the extension of St. Louis' Metrolink should've provided bonus points for it too. And St. Louis despite the closing of Interstate 64 still has a smooth traffic flow to it because of the excellent layout of its roads and streets. it could possibly be the Poplar Street Bridge that drags St. Louis down as well, but that problem is in the process of being fixed by moving Interstate 70 onto a bridge which will be on the northern edge of downtown. St. Louis also has a bunch of decent bypass routes to relieve traffic from Interstates 70 and 55 (Interstate 270 which takes traffic between Indianapolis and Kansas City through its northern suburbs, and Interstate 255 which allows traffic from St. Louis' southern suburbs and its eastern suburbs in Illinois to bypass downtown to go to either Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, or Memphis).

[Texas Mack]

Originally Posted by Spade

Actually DC has high public ridership. Very high. It's just that there are not many roads in the area for 5.4 million people. They did not think that this area would get this big. But the DC metro system is very high in ridership numbers. I contribute to it everyday.

I'd agree with this. The one thing I've always felt about the DC side of the Balt/Wash metro area is that the freeways (uh, I mean expressways ) leading into Washington's core aren't well designed, Plus, you don't really have a reliable, straightforward N-S corridor. The northern roads all seem to kind of arc around the core and let traffic off on secondary thru ways.

And the Beltway is awful. Yuck!

Oh, and another problem is that on some highways (like I-66 in Virginia), the lanes merge when you'd think they'd be expanding. I experienced this heading east from Reston going inside the Beltway. I was shocked.

At least the scenery is nice to look at while you're sitting still.