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Its bad. However, I have a hard time believing its worse than New York, Dallas, or LA.
As to why, HurricaneDC hit the nail on the head. When I grew up here in the 70s, living in DC was akin to living in a city like Albany or Austin. It was pretty small scale.
Fast forward 30 years and millions more people, here we are. The burbs have expanded on both sides of the Potomac. People are commuting from Hagerstown and the Eastern Shore.
Hell, PG county, NOVA, and a good chunk of MoCo had lots of farms and woods. Now they are filling up with sprawl.
Oh they just weren't at that spot for whatever reason. DC cops are the strictest in the country when it comes to tickets.
Maybe that's so with parking tickets, but definitely NOT when it comes to red-light runners blocking intersections and causing gridlock. I have never, ever seen DC police make attempts to keep cross-traffic from pulling into a filled intersection where they get stuck, "blocking the box". The Farragut North area is perpetually blocked throughout rush-hour by thousands of these violators.
Nor do they pay attention to single-occupant cars illegally "butting in line" by getting into the busses-only lanes approaching the Fred. Douglass Bridge, which happens hundreds of times each morning. The DC police are missing a golden chance to reap literraly millions in revenue.
Last edited by slowlane2; 01-21-2011 at 06:13 PM..
There are people I know who can metro to work (me included), but the fact is that driving is faster. Even with all the traffic jams.
In my case, it takes me 16-36 mins to drive to work one way, depending on the time I leave. Using public transportation takes me 45 mins to an hour depending on traffic. That includes all the walking, shuttle to train switch, etc...
Several reasons why people are not using metro when they can. Most common reason is that many are just too busy to sacrifice that extra hour. They have families to take care of a lot of times. Others live so far away that public transportation is not a practical option. A few cases where it's some foolish "pride" thing that I don't understand at all.
I personally use public transportation 90% of the time. I don't have family to take care of, so I can afford to lose that time. Even then, I usually either read, play video games, or sleep on the way so it's not time wasted for me. It's also less stressful than driving. The other 10% is mostly when I got a billion things to do that day.
I don't think Metro can go any faster during rush hour, particularly the red line. Those trains run literally back to back, and so close together that I get nervous riding in the first car and being able to see the back of the previous train before it, right in front of it. And they're so close together that the train has to stop in the tunnel until the next one can leave the platform.
I wonder when Metro is going to upgrade to super-speed rail. Instead of the normal 45 minutes, it should take half that amount of time to reach a final destination. And it's even worse for off-peak hours. Why does it take 35 minutes just for a train to arrive??? I used to have a part-time gig at nights and got off at 10pm...I would miss that damn red line at Van Ness every single day and had to wait 35 minutes for the next one. That always pissed me off because it took me well over an hour to get home.
I've driven around Chicago, and our traffic is much worse.
Interestingly, WMATA rail ridership has been light this month - just 4 days over 700k from Jan 1-20, compared to 7 last year. Would help if out our super-expensive subway didn't have to keep raising fares to pay for worker pensions.
I've lived all over the world... London and DC for at least two years... DC has terrible traffic... even worse when it rains or the sun is low on 270.. lol
One thing about traffic, it always depends on where you are going... if you are going south and the traffic is backed up in north lane, then traffic is great for you... smooth. Going north it sucks.
I've given up driving in DC, like I did in London... I now take the metro... I moved right above the metro and love myself for it - pay out the nose for it though :-( ... walk to the metro in 2 minutes... I can walk out the house (front door) at 7:20 and at my desk by 7:55... love it. Still working on the ride home... seems every other train terminates at a couple of stops before mine... I leave a bit too late to catch the 4:30 train...
DC's traffic problems have an incredible number of factors, each of which only exacerbates the problem.
1) DC was never designed for cars, thus on the whole its streets (apart from K, Constitution, and Independence) are quite narrow. When looking at the amount of traffic per lane or road space, DC outdoes LA and NYC by a landslide. 95 and 495 have similar traffic counts to many Southern California roads but have fewer lanes because the expected demand is lower.
However, widening roads is NOT the solution. It is well known in planning circles that for every lane added to a highway, the latent (or induced) demand increases because the addition of said lane increases the attractiveness of using that road. Watch VDOT's HOT lane plan backfire and only worsen congestion.
2) The Metro is nearing capacity, especially on the Red and Orange Lines, both of which have been incredibly successful because they have spurred transit-oriented development and have large population bases. Further compound the overcrowding is the fact that WMATA refuses to upgrade both station design (one escalator up and one down at a station like Dupont or Farragut West per exit is simply too little) or car layouts. For riders on the Red and Orange Lines, a longitudinal arrangement with bench seating could easy increase capacity per car by 25-35%. Perhaps and extra door per side could improve passenger flow, or even widening existing doors by a foot.
The most obvious solution here is to improve capacity. The top priority is the M Street tunnel, which would create a new station at Rosslyn and separate the Blue and Orange Lines by having the Blue Line run through Georgetown (think of how that could increase mobility to and from the neighbourhood, especially in terms of lowering traffic), through the densely populated areas of the West End and Logan Circle, and add another line at Union Station to relieve the bottleneck at the Metro's busiest station.
3) Lack of alternate transportation routes through outer parts of the District and inner suburbs is glaringly obvious. Trying to get from Friendship Heights to U Street, for example, can be done on Metro or by bus, but it's expensive and time-wasting. DC Streetcar needs to happen as soon as possible to replace overcrowded buses and simplify intra-District travel. It will also allow more people to live without cars in those areas, reducing traffic on heavily used arteries. This also works for corridors such as Bethesda to Silver Spring, where trams could easily carry large numbers of people.
4) Reluctance to build within under-utilised areas of the District and instead in suburban Virginia and Maryland. Obviously, this forces people to move by car.
5) Limited to no controls on sprawl. In cities such as London, growth boundaries force development inward. This allows for more people to live in a compact area. Development should not be occurring in rural areas such as Leesburg, and the auto-centric nature of those communities is another reason for more traffic.
6) Poly-centric layout of the metro area. In this regard, DC is much like Paris. There is a core with restricted development opportunities, while growth must occur in the suburbs. Paris solves this by having a dense inner network of rapid transit with express commuter rail. Unfortunately, the DC area does not have the money, willpower, or population to support this. A larger-scope plan could be for Arlington, Tysons, Bethesda, and Silver Spring to be outer, concentrated, high-density suburbs with Metro linking them in the same way that the Beltway links those areas.
This is the number one reason that I choose to raise my child in a small condo downtown. I hear so many people saying that it is better for children to have more space, but then they waste two hours a day (which they could be spending with their children) in traffic.
1) DC was never designed for cars, thus on the whole its streets (apart from K, Constitution, and Independence) are quite narrow.
Not sure that I follow this. Most of DC's arteries are quite wide--Pennsylvania is six lanes + turn lanes through the central city; Mass Ave and Connecticut Ave. are between 4-6 lanes; 16th Street is four with turn lanes; M is four lanes going one way; 15th Street is four lanes going one way, etc.
As far as driving within the city proper of DC goes, I think you can look at three main culprits of traffic back-ups: poor light timing, diagonal streets that create odd intersections, and traffic circles. Then there are other factors that are harder to pin down--the preponderance of cabs and delivery vehicles in a relatively small space, a large number of out-of-state drivers, the fact that the District imports so many people on any given work day, etc.
Not sure that I follow this. Most of DC's arteries are quite wide--Pennsylvania is six lanes + turn lanes through the central city; Mass Ave and Connecticut Ave. are between 4-6 lanes; 16th Street is four with turn lanes; M is four lanes going one way; 15th Street is four lanes going one way, etc.
As far as driving within the city proper of DC goes, I think you can look at three main culprits of traffic back-ups: poor light timing, diagonal streets that create odd intersections, and traffic circles. Then there are other factors that are harder to pin down--the preponderance of cabs and delivery vehicles in a relatively small space, a large number of out-of-state drivers, the fact that the District imports so many people on any given work day, etc.
Even so, compare this to any avenue in New York City, where it's around six lanes going one way. Penn and Mass maybe six lanes, but only three each way.
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