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I currently live in South Orange County in California. I am moving to Raleigh for school in a couple months and was wondering what the traffic was like?? I was also wondering if there are good/bad parts of Raleigh?? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
What we call traffic you will refer to as smooth sailing. In reality, the traffic volumes can be heavy between 7-9AM and 4:30-7PM, but otherwise the freeways are generally wide open. Even during those hours most parts of the freeway are moving with most backups due to merging traffic.
As for good/bad areas, there's a wealth of infomration in this forum to assist you. For starters, don't confuse Raleigh with the Traingle region. If you're asking about Raleigh specifically, generally southeast Raleigh is the least desirable area.
7:39AM and traffic is sailing along everywhere except the I440/US1 area. Gotta love the "Traffic" in this area. Compared to SoCal you'll fall in love with the traffic here. It'll get worse in the coming years, but so will most other places. Also I notice that if traffic is backed up on one camara, if you go to the next one over it's smooth sailing. It was NOT like that in the DC area and I suppose in the SoCal area too. I've actually driven in SoCal and SanFran too and those areas are the only ones I would say has worse traffic than DC, but not by much.
One more thing...don't you think they need to put some more camaras along I-540? That area is getting much worse traffic lately since new areas of the highway opened up.
Traffic is bad in Raleigh especially going in and out of RTP. I40 is particularly bad and around Cary during rush hour, traffic is exceptionally bad. 45 minutes to go 10 miles may be a breeze to some but any way you look at it, it is slow. Packing people in like sardines always makes for bad traffic.
Packing people in like sardines always makes for bad traffic.
Not with proper planning and appropriate alternative transportation options. My biggest complaint with the traffic here is that I really don't have any other options.
Traffic here is not "DC bad" or "SoCal bad", but then again it shouldn't be. This is a region nearing 2 million (Ral-Dur-CH etc). DC has about 7 mil btwn it and Baltimore, and SoCal--well...we've all lost count really. One could *easily* argue that traffic is worse than it should be for a metro of this size. I don't think Charlotte's traffic is as bad as the Triangle and both areas are around that 1.6 to 1.8 million mark in population.
Point is traffic is going to be the biggest challenge to quality of life here in the years to come. You can't build/widen roads forever to solve the problem--look at Phoenix or Atlanta..nobody wants that. Building more roads encourages more sprawl, more traffic, etc. This goes on and on..Just look at 540 since it opened...We must ultimately get a significant regional transit network to get people around. There is a commission looking at this right now and I'm hopeful we can get something efficient in place. I think we're beginning to move toward dense, livable areas where this can become a reality. No, some people won't ever get in a train--but the option to do so is key for people who don't want to get in their car to go everywhere.
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