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This is interesting...they say that the recession has turned back the clock on congestion, but as we come out of it these are the metros with the worst congestion:
I'm in the Chicago area and I have definitely noticed less congestion on the expressways and tollways at rush hour compared to a couple of years ago. While it's true that some of our tollways have been widened recently, I think there is more to it than that.
In traffic studies that I've casually read on the web, taking 5% of the cars off the road at rush hour can make a drastic difference in actual and perceived congestion.
This is interesting...they say that the recession has turned back the clock on congestion, but as we come out of it these are the metros with the worst congestion:
I've noticed big decreases in Atlanta not just since the recession started, but since around 2005 or so when gas prices started going up dramatically. I and others I know started really bundling trips, changing how we drove. I remember a colleague at work talking about how tough it was to get his wife to start thinking about all the trips she needed to make and how to do it the most cheaply. I think once people get into those habits, they tend to keep them.
GDOT publishes AADT (annual average daily traffic) figures each year on their website, and I was perusing thru them a while ago. A lot of the freeway counts are down over 10% in the last few years, that's pretty major. If I'm recalling correctly, I think I-85 thru Gwinnett is where we've had the least drop-off, but it's still a drop. And obviously the redesigned 316 interchange there helped a bunch just in terms of congestion. Same with the GA 400 widening above exit 7. It really helped congestion, but numbers are still down from where they were after it was widened.
A while back when I was commuting from Decatur to Alpharetta a lot, I started out leaving Decatur at 6:00am. Leaving at 7:00am was awful. Within a year, 7:00am had become the new 6:00am congestion-wise.
I still can't stand traffic, and I think it's a major quality-of-life issue.
yay boston! not. our roads are old, narrow and were never built for today's volume of cars, it sucks. And note the purpose of the big dig was never to decrease traffic volume it was just to put the central artery underground.
People complain about Miami traffic but for being ranked 7th in population and 13th in traffic it is really not that bad. Miami is a pretty small place in area compared to these are cities so I think that has something to do with it too.
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