Yesterday, a story went out across the news wires (Yahoo, USA Today, etc) by Fred Bayles of USA Today which listed Houston and Los Angeles as "having the worst stop and go traffic" in America. According to a new report, major highway traffic bottlenecks - defined as areas where drivers encounter 700,000 hours of combined delays annually - have increased from 167 in 1999 to 233 in 2002. This news comes out as Congress wraps up writing the legislation for the new six year transportation appropriations bill.
A friend of mine, BUSCar director David Hutzelman, documented during last year's Metro rail debate how road construction had slowed during the late 1990's and the beginning of this decade in Houston / Harris County. This slowdown of new road construction under former Mayor Lee Brown was tightly positively correlated with the rise in commute times in the Houston area.
Moreover, the American Highway Users Alliance documents that of the nation's 25 worst freeway bottlenecks, 2 were in Houston. The 610 - Interstate 10 exchange has a daily use of 295,000 vehicles which amounted to 25.18 million hours of traffic delay. This amounts to 69,000 hours of delay EVERYDAY for exchange users. AND THIS IS FOR ONLY ONE FREEWAY INTERCHANGE!
Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle and Metro released ridership numbers for the $324 million (likely more, but we won't know about it until later) 7.5 mile shiny new twain twack. The January 2004 ridership figures totaled 558,000. This number included 177,000 who rode the train during the 4 day Super Bowl period. Ergo, 380,000 boardings occured during the other 27 days of the month. That amounts to 14,070 train riders per day. The Chronicle mentions that Metro plans to reroute more bus routes towards the rail line in the hope of improving ridership to the estimated 33,000 per day that Metro forecasts will ride the rail line.
Any way you look at this, it should start to become clear how absolutely ineffective rail is in dealing with traffic congestion. Stopping rail is getting to be imperative because government burdens in America are growing everywhere, leading to more and more wasteful programs (like rail) being implemented.
Government is spiraling out of control in this country...