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Phoenix is very well planned and the grid system there is phenomenal. Phoenix being a newer city has some of best road and freeway infrastructure. Main roads are literally 6-8 lanes pretty much everywhere. Unless you’re going clear across town you don’t need to take the freeway. That’s one thing I miss about Phoenix. I live in Atlanta now and I don’t leave my side of town unless I absolutely have to and I only Uber to downtown/Midtown/Buckhead. Driving in Atlanta SUCKS.
Agreed on Phoenix. It's an expansive city but the highway system is great. Vacationed there a few times and never really got stop and go traffic considering population of city.
Contrast with Denver which has terrible infrastructure.
The last time I went through Houston in September it took us about 2 hours coming through on I-10 from Baton Rouge. From Baytown to 610 was stop and go grinding to a complete stop at times. So glad when we made it to 290. Was smooth sailing to Temple from there.
290 is only now good after 20 years of construction. Before then, that road is a mess all the way to Cypress (only for them to keep building outward).
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Originally Posted by councilor j
Houston is terrible, when I travel through there I try to leave at certain times to avoid bumper to bumper traffic, but I almost always seem to hit it. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to live in Houston and deal with that traffic daily.
For as big as San Antonio is it’s very easy to get around, and yes Austin is terrible when it comes to traffic
For Houston - it doesn't help that with the somewhat decentralized nature of major employment centers that there's not even "reverse commuting" - i.e. some highways are congested in both direction during rush hour with not many alternate route to get around that.
For Austin - that's what happened when the infrastructure is designed for a ~1M metro area instead of 2.3M+ and growing metro area. Traffic was bad 20 years ago...and Austin only grew even more since then.
Was super easy to get around the city. I think the lack of a centralized employment core there helps.
Yes, lack of traffic has much more to do with activity patterns than "design." There's no way to funnel a large number of people into a central employment area at one time without creating a traffic jam. Metros with fewer office jobs and more industrial/retail jobs will have less highly focused commutes, both in space (geographically) and over time.
Another set of Rust Belt metros don't really have traffic "problems" because they had lots of money for road-building in the 1950s - 1970s, but don't have the jobs or population to fill said roads today. But a lack of traffic, and therefore a lack of economic activity to pay for things like road repaving, is in itself a problem!
I'd imagine some of the Rust Belt cities, but I haven't been to all to verify: Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Cleveland/Akron, Detroit.
Grand Rapids was a breeze, and I'll second KCMO
I know people complain about Denver, but it was laughably easy going on my recent trip
A key differentiator is semi/passerby traffic. Some cities have a little due to their isolation (Denver, Twin Cities, SLC), while other cities, due to their location and proximity to other large cities (Nashville, Atlanta, DC, etc) get a disproportionate amount of semi/passerby traffic that can keep the freeways busy almost around the clock.
Most highway miles per capita than any other large/largish city in America.
If you think about KC, it's incredibly spread out but has 435, 670 and 635. You have I-35 (N&S) I-70 (E&W) and other larger feeder freeways such as 29, 69, 71. For a city with a metro population of 2.2MM+, it may be the best city to live in if you're commuting during rush hour.
Everyone knows that St. Louis City is about 1/3 of what it once was just back in the 1950s. But the metro keeps growing so the population pressure is still there. But the city's infrastructure is built for a much larger population. The suburbanites travel in or out on the interstates but once you are in the city, the city streets are the best way to get around. I was born there when it was 10th largest city in the US and lived there into the mid-1970s and we often took the interstates as it was faster than navigating the city streets. Now it almost seems reversed. I was there last April and stayed in the city's west end near Washington University and navigating the city streets was a piece of cake while the interstates were clogged with cars. It doesn't take much to screw up a commute if you are on the interstate.
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