All of this demand can't be handled in the (rush) hour like it used to be, so traffic spills over, trails over into other hours, |
And that's spreading to more of the urbanized areas, so instead of just the area in the beltway being congested, it's a lot more than that now. |
Areas that are most successful in dealing with transportation issues take a multi-modal approach, |
Areas that are rapidly growing are usually places where traffic is growing, too. If you add 10,000 jobs, you never add enough transportation capacity to meet the demand. |
Congestion is worsening, no doubt about that. |
Each city needs its own 'bag of tricks' to address this growing problem. |
In a booming economy, the transportation system is always going to be a lagging factor. |
The lesson I take away from that is you can reduce congestion over some period of time, but it's very difficult to sustain that. |
There's a combination of factors -- the amount of people, the amount of roadway that is there. It's sort of a supply demand relationship -- you can think of it that way. And there's a lot more demand than there is supply. |
They have been a real leader in getting more efficiency out of the existing systems. They have really led the country in that respect, in a lot of technology. |