The latest nationwide report from the Texas Transportation Institute shows that San Diegans spend an average of 57 hours a year sitting in idle traffic during rush hour.
The institute puts out the Urban Mobility Report every year. This years report puts San Diego County at number six in the country for the length of time motorists are stuck in rush-hour traffic. This is time drivers spend in their cars in addition to the time their commutes would take if traffic werent an issue. The national average, by the way, is 38 hours a year. Traffic delays have grown faster in San Diego over the past 25 years than they have in any American city besides Dallas.
I know a lot of people say this is bad news. But I think its great. Consider a couple of facts. For one thing, its good for public radio. People stuck in their cars have to spend even more time listening to Morning Edition and All Things Considered on KPBS. Im tempted to put my own show on that list too. But These Days comes on a little bit after rush hour.
Secondly, if we get sick of being stuck in traffic, we may actually be motivated to change our communities to move away from aggressive suburban sprawl.
Think about it. What if people could live 50 miles from their place of employment and still drive to work at the speed limit? There would be no motivation to change our dependence on cement freeways and steel, gas-powered cars. And you know the rule about creating more road and freeway capacity: If you build it, they will come. More roads mean more people, more cars and even more hellish sprawl.
San Diegans are spending more and more time stuck in traffic because our population has grown a lot faster than our road capacity. Thank God for that! Otherwise our county would be covered with concrete from the shoreline to the mountains. Maybe you cant stop people from moving to San Diego. But you can insure that theyll have a miserable commute if they contribute to sprawl.
Im optimistic enough to hope that we will eventually come to our senses and understand that living close to where we work and shop is something thats going to make our lives a lot better. Hopefully well understand that cutting down on car use is the thing we can all do to stave off global warming.
So be glad that its not easy to drive at rush hour. And if you do insist on driving, stay tuned to 89.5 FM!
Dave
October 05, 2007 at 05:43 PM
A Typical Socialist answer to anything is "Equal distribution of misery". Nimby's (Not in my back yard) like you are a hindrance to the American dream. I have mine but you shall not!
For your information our country became the economic envy of the world through freedom. Not from failed policies of Social engineering. The hatred and lack of compassion that I here in articles like this from liberals disgust me!
We spend a fortune on mass transit, buy the biggest busses we can find and then only three people ride them at any one time. These 40 monstrosities block traffic and create more pollution per person then any form of travel. As to the concrete sprawl why do we have useless car pool lanes and paid express ways only for a select few? That is poor economic use of resources. But, instead of reducing the size of a failed transit system the old manipulative Socialist expand it. Instead of getting rid of this discriminate car pool they build more. Bottom line the biggest detriment to San Diegos traffic has been manipulative Socialist Liberals in power.
What we need is more Freedom not less oppression. It scares me as a citizen to here someone like yourself from so called public radio raving about the inconvience of another citizen. All this Class envy, hatred and lack of tolerance that filters through our society today come from sources like you. My suggestion to you is if you do not like here and hate your fellow citizens that much then move to some third world country and live on a dirt rod somewhere and wait for the next regime coup.
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Greg Duch
December 28, 2007 at 01:47 AM
Just an observation:
San Diego is perhaps the least accessible city, and most vulnerable to being cut off large city, in the lower 48 states.
To use a trite metaphor, SD is an island on land.
Transportation Access:
1. Autos, Trucks, Buses:
I-5 and I-15 are the only road links to the rest of the nation. If one or the other is blocked , say by wildfires or earthquakes, traffic will come to a halt. Under ideal "normal" conditions, traffic is constricted to a crawl much of the time.
2. Railroads--there is the one and only line leading due to north to LA. It is shared by Amtrak, the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe RR and THE COASTER. At some places, it is reduced to only one track, rather than two.
This makes it hard for trains traveling in opposite directions to pass each other without a head-on collision.
The track(s) hug(s) the cliffs above the Pacific with its fingernails. A good rainstorm is a good catalyst for the tracks to get flooded or warped.
There is the airport with its single runway. If a quake shook that runway, it might snap, crackle and pop into a heap of concrete and asphalt.
If ever a really catastrophic event occured, the only means of evacuation might be by sea, or across the border through Mexico.
Just a thought.
GD
Greg Duch
January 03, 2008 at 12:36 AM
Commuters who sit idly in congested traffic, whether here or Atlanta, Chicago or Rochester are really quite dumb.
They waste their time. They waste gasoline; much as one who leaves a water faucet pour freely for no good reason, wastes our most precious resource, H2O.
In addition, they are addling their BRAINS. Carbon Monoxide is a poisonous gas, which can kill your average human, when inhaled beyond a certain threshold.
As CO is inhaled, it takes the place of oxygen which is generally much better for humans to inhale.
The bloodstream and the various body organs get starved for oxygen, as all of that noxious Carbon Monoxide fills your lungs and circulatory system.
If one continues this behavior twice a day, five days a week, for a lengthy period of time, I must imagine that the brain suffers damage as a result of being deprived of adequate oxygen, while the driver idling in traffic. The damage is cumulative, I would think.
So that after, say, five years of commuting in congested traffic twice a day, five days a week, your brain is probably addled and atrophied by the effects of repeated daily exposure to Carbon Monoxide.
