Orlando has horrible traffic (Miami, Davie: rental car, best city, sales)

[jaimeblt]

Originally Posted by msaRick

Read through the Sentinel and you can't help but notice that the city councils governing the towns surrounding Orlando (Maitland and Winter Park come to mind) have very small town mentalities and are really trying to fight the inevitable. All that they really do is making our growing pains much worse.

As a related topic, does anyone think the planned commuter rail will hope? And does anyone else feel like I do that some how our local government will find a way to F*%$ this oppurtunity up?

My mother was on the Maitland transportation board. She certainly did not have a small town mentality (she even supported the redevelopment plans for the Horatio/17-92 area). The relatively few actions Maitland undertakes which slow down traffic (the school zone on Horatio, the barricade on one of the Maitland Blvd/I-4 offramps, the speed bumps on certain residential streets, etc.) are done in the name of safety. The city wants to mitigate the number of accidents. Maitland Blvd, in particular, has a large number of accidents. (As a side note, the slower the speed of traffic, the lower the number of accidents and the less serious those accidents are.)

I can't really comment about Winter Park, other than to say that I like the re-bricking program.

It's not the fault of Maitland that the outlying cities were built/developed on an ad hoc basis without a metropolitan area plan, and that this led to bottlenecks in the older parts of town.

The commuter rail can help. With gas prices what they are, people will be more amenable to cutting costs via using rail. I wish it would start operating sooner, as I would use it.

[bdpop]

Originally Posted by jaimeblt

The commuter rail can help. With gas prices what they are, people will be more amenable to cutting costs via using rail. I wish it would start operating sooner, as I would use it.

The light rail is dead. It is a shame.

[Magnulus]

Originally Posted by jaimeblt

I can't really comment about Winter Park, other than to say that I like the re-bricking program..

I don't. Brick is really not very fun to ride on a motorcycle or bicycle, nor is it great to walk on. Also, the brick streets are poor quality, very bumpy, not even good brick. To me, it's anti-mobility NIMBY-ism, about like Windemere and their gravel roads.

Will Winter Park pick up the tab for new shocks?

[paleo99]

Orlando looks like the whole city was built up as quickly as it possibly could, just assuming people were always going to move down here. It's almost like something you'd see from Sim City where you have this 2 lane road and you put half your city on that road. If you want an alternative to Orlando look at Phoenix. It's one of the nation's largest cities yet the whole city is located on a grid. They have a loop which requires no turnpikes. You'll never see Phoenix in the horrible traffic category like Orlando despite its size. I drove around that city and couldn't believe how I was NOT STRESSED driving. We all know Orlando driving is a nightmare, no way around it.

[TedTLPN]

Anyone who thinks Miami is not as bad as Orlando has never driven the two. I'm sure you can fudge the #'s to make Miami statistically better, but in the real world of actually doing it, Miami is light years behind Orlando.

[doom1001]

Originally Posted by TedTLPN

Anyone who thinks Miami is not as bad as Orlando has never driven the two. I'm sure you can fudge the #'s to make Miami statistically better, but in the real world of actually doing it, Miami is light years behind Orlando.

I'm in Miami but spend lots of time in Orlando and there's no way Miami is better than Orlando.Miami is not as bad as an L.A or D.C or the other well know high traffic cities,but it's very close.I've found Orlando to have problem areas but overall it's nowhere near Miami,plus there's more ground streets to use as backup in case I-4 gets backed up.Tampa is a city that even though I've spent less time in I can only remember being in backed up traffic like once.

[Mr Idealism]

Having moved here from NOVA outside of DC there is NO comparison at all. Sure I-4 has it's issues around the tourist corridor and traffic around downtown is stop and go during rush hour, but it's nothing like these other cities. The only area that really gets me is 436 around altamonte, which really reminds me of NOVA, so I stay the hell out of there at all costs. While you need to pay a little bit to ride them, the toll roads are really a great way to get around with little or no traffic even during rush hour. The fact that I can drive to Winter Park during rush hour from SW Orlando in under an hour says a lot, cause a similar trip from the burbs to DC during rush hour would take about 2 hours.

The people that complain must not have driven in Chicago, LA, DC, or even Atlanta. Oh, and Miami is so much worse...

[Pete C]

Orlando traffic is totally manageable by comparison to many major metros. I think of Orlando as just being very congested but not a nightmare. Only people who have not lived in big cities with truly bad traffic say the traffic here is really bad. LA is the worst I have ever experienced, bar none. Atlanta and DC are next, heck the entire BosWash corridor is awful. Miami is most definitely worse than Orlando. I'll take Orlando traffic every day over those.

[chopchop0]

Originally Posted by TedTLPN

Anyone who thinks Miami is not as bad as Orlando has never driven the two. I'm sure you can fudge the #'s to make Miami statistically better, but in the real world of actually doing it, Miami is light years behind Orlando.

Are you serious? US1 in miami after I-95 is a perpetual parking lot, day and night. Miami is much worse than Orlando. The Palmetto expressway is much worse than anything in Orlando

Miami?s Palmetto Expressway among most congested - South Florida Business Journal

[connor35]

My thought is the people who think Orlando traffic is bad have either never lived anywhere else (because Orlando has some of the easiest traffic I've ever seen). Or else they have to deal with I-4 daily (which seems easily avoided).