Posted on 09/02/2008 6:49:33 AM PDT by Vigilanteman
(LifeWire) - Lost time and endless aggravation are two of the
biggest drawbacks of a grueling commute by car. But gridlock on
the way to work also harms the environment by pumping extra
pollution into the air and wasting precious fuel.
How wasteful and time-consuming a commute becomes depends in part
on how slowly traffic moves and how long it is stalled, says
David Schrank, an associate research scientist at the Texas
Transportation Institute, part of Texas A&M University in College
Station.
Things start to get inefficient only when highway traffic begins
to bog down, he says. "You're not wasting fuel until you drop
below 60 mph, but when you get to stop-and-go traffic, you're
really wasting fuel as you accelerate and decelerate."
Schrank is part of the team that conducted the institute's latest
annual Urban Mobility Study, examining the fuel (and time)
commuters waste because of congestion. The study, based on 2005
data (the most recent available), measures how many hours and
gallons of fuel are wasted per individual commuter˜whether that
commuter is traveling by car, rail, bus or other form of
motorized transportation˜during peak commute times.
Overall, traffic congestion costs the U.S. economy $78 billion a
year, wasting 2.9 billion gallons of fuel and robbing commuters
of 4.2 billion hours, the study found. Here are the top 10 most
wasteful cities in the country for commuters, based on fuel
usage, according to the institute:
(Excerpt) Read more at climate.weather.com ...
At a quick glance it looks like the same list for gun control and top gang violence and top murder capitals.
DC should be #2, it has been for the last several decades.
L.A. isn't designed for walking -- everything's too spread out. But you're right about the L.A. buses -- avoid them if at all possible. Last time I took the bus (in the late 70s) I was just too young to drive.
WE’ RE NUMBER FIVE!!
The problem with CONGESTION (not distance) making Houston a bad commute is that it is in “the system” by design. Our anal retentive City Counil/mayor power structure serves the downtown business alliance.
They want to discourage commuting and deliberately logjam the I-10 corridor (which serves transnational traffic going THROUGH town, besides just the commuters and local industrial/delivery traffic). Chris Bell (city council, mayoral candidate, congress critter who lodged the complaint against Tom DeLay...) said as much in an interview that those living “outside the (610) loop” should not be encouranged to live in outlying areas or to even come into town to enjoy the nightlife. Of course the city will still ANNEX outlying areas for the tax $$$, just don’t expect city services.
Our tollroad loop (Beltway 8) has a feeder street system around most of the loop. But the traffic lights are deliberately out of phase to encourage riding the pay road. Increasing congestion and pollution.
And at night there are a number of “inner loop” traffic lights that are red in one direction for 4-8 minutes after 10pm. Again such civil engineering (not present in the daytime cycling) are COUNTER to keeping traffic moving.
I changed my hours from 6:30am until 3pm, and even that didn't help much. The I-5 and 405 are nearly as plugged at 5:30am as 7:30.
Eventually, I just "retired" and moved out here to the desert in '02 and haven't been back since.
Dang BMWcycle, I thought we would be #2 —especially after today’s commute with all the government showing up because September is fiscal year close, and all the children in VA going back to school today —
we made the top 10 again!!!! Tops in murders, drugs, violent crime, non violent crime, welfare recipients, overweight people and top 10 in traffic congestion....GO DETROIT!!!!
Santa Clarita to Brentwood as a daily commute sounds rough. Good move getting out there to the desert.
Yeah but where do you stand in corruption in government?
I traveled from Mississippi to New York in July and the area around Louisville, KY was about 25 cents higher than all the other areas I passed through.
we make the folks in washington breathe a sigh of relief....
I was thinking the same about Detroit. Why in the world would there be traffic there?
I did 5 years in Seattle Worse traffic I've ever seen.
Sweet. Even with a major bridge down, Minneapolis-St. Paul is off the list.
Our government is doing much the same. There is a chunk-o-highway in Seattle called the Alaska Way viaduct, which is really just a limited access arterial (our only one), which the city wants to tear down and force commuters that use it to surface streets.
To replace the 520 bridge, with another bridge the same size that would not reduce congestion by one car, they want to implement tolls on both 520 and I-90.
Every road package they put up is laden with pork for light rail and busses, but they dont want to create any more capacity for roads ... then they are incensed when we dont pass the packages.
When they do build additional lanes, they are made into HOV lanes. Now, they are starting to charge tolls to people who want to use the HOV lanes.
A week ago the mayor did a “car free Seattle” thingy and towed away peoples cars for parking them in front of thier houses. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2068016/posts
The humor in all of this, if there is any, is that we have the highest gas taxes in the nation ... and a state that says there is no money for new roads. The Tacoma-Seattle-Everett Corridor has exactly 2 routes that you can take to get from Tacoma to Everett without having to stop at a light, and those two routes (I-5 and 405/167) both will drop you down to as few as 2 lanes each way at critical junctures.
On top of all this, we have a thingy out here called the CAO (Critical Areas Ordinance) which effectively forces development into cities instead of in the counties. They want density and control of the sheeples.
Our transit system is a hub/spoke system, which means that suburb to suburb commuting is pretty much impossible on transit.
LOL. I thought Seattle was one of those that either biked or walked all for the enviornment of course.
there are actually some people in detroit who work...but there is no money to fix the roads, or to add new ones, it is not uncommon to sit in stopped traffic for up to 35 minutes....... but we have the fattest welfare recipients in the nation, with lifetime benefits..
Build enough highways so there is no gridlock.
Time redlights to minimize waiting-no one should ever stop if there is no opposing traffic.
Design intersections to speed traffic through the intersection with as little stopping and waiting as possible. My favorite design is the cloverleaf intersection.
Consider the lowly intersection: everyone wants to traverse the middle square of real estate. Design a red light to minimize each car's time in the square. Use multiple left turn lanes to maximize the number of cars that get through on a left turn arrow. More lanes mean more cars that get through on each green cycle. An ideal intersection would have the same number of left turn lanes and straight lanes as the number of lanes in the highway, along with at least one dedicated right turn lane.
Finally, right turn on red should be the law in all 50 states.
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