Studies of congestion are misleading

because for the most part, the studies only consider freeways. For one, that type of traffic use is a lot easier to study.

See the Reuters story "California has worst U.S. traffic: study," which points out that New York City's urban freeways are far less congested than typical interstates (which by the way, weren't originally intended to be intra-regional commuting pipelines designed to denude city populations in favor of burgeoning suburbs).

This orientation to freeways serving suburbanites is a tremendous bias present within virtually all studies of "congestion." In this case that bias is only strengthened by the study's sponsors. From "Better Road Conditions, Worse Congestion," the Associated Press story:

The state-by-state evaluation was conducted by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and financed by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles.

This information, and a link to the study, isn't even included in the Reuters story. Click here for the link to the Reason Foundation webpage on the study.

As Jane Jacobs said in an interview after the book The Nature of Economies was released, "When people say 'why aren't there enough roads?' they are asking the wrong question. The right question is 'why are there so many cars?'"

Granted, center cities are congested here and there--Manhattan way more than DC for example. Certainly, within DC during the day streets can be significantly congested--I, K, and M Streets, New York, Florida and Wisconsin Avenues--and major in-to-DC roads used by commuters (14th Street bridge). But at other times, streets can be virtually empty, even during times right around rush hour (between 6 and 7 pm many downtown streets are easily negotiated, etc., and at midnight, except on Friday and Saturday nights, it's easy to get to Georgetown from Bethesda--takes less than 15 minutes...)

But for the most part, because of (1) the transit system, (2) accessibility--quality destinations in close proximity, and (3) walkability, I argue that once again center cities like Washington, DC possess competitive advantage vis-a-vis the suburbs in terms of mobility--the speed and ease of getting to places.

But that competitive advantage must be continually strengthened by linking transportation and land use planning in every way, to ensure that automobility doesn't supplant mobility and accessibility.