[ed. See also: Many options, no single solution.]
At 4:35 a.m. each weekday, Stan Paul drives out of his Southern California suburb with 10 passengers in a van, headed to his job as an undergraduate counselor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Some 80 miles and 90 minutes later, the vanpoolers finally arrive to start their workday.
On the return trip, Los Angeles' infamously snarled traffic often stretches their afternoon commute to three hours. Since Paul joined in 2001, he has spent roughly 1 1/2 years aboard the vanpool and traveled far enough to complete a round trip to the moon.
"These super commuters, they don't just give you a day's work," he said. "They give you their lives."
Transportation experts say Paul's long journey offers a warning for the future, when traffic rivaling a major holiday might someday be the norm for many more Americans.
"If we don't change, in 2045, the transportation system that powered our rise as a nation will instead slow us down," the Department of Transportation said in report earlier this year titled "Beyond Traffic."
"Transit systems will be so backed up that riders will wonder not just when they will get to work, but if they will get there at all," the report said. "At the airports, and on the highway, every day will be like Thanksgiving is today." (...)
Elected officials and transportation professionals generally agree on the nation's intensifying traffic congestion but are divided about how to address it.
The Obama administration leans heavily toward getting people out of their vehicles, a solution preferred by many urban planners. New highway lanes aren't enough, the theory goes, because they will simply attract drivers who had been taking other routes and encourage more sprawl. Soon congestion will be as bad as ever.
One alternative is to encourage people to trade suburban amenities for more densely developed neighborhoods where they can easily take transit, walk or bike to jobs, stores and entertainment.
"As the population surges, we're going to have more bottlenecks, so giving people another option is really important," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in an interview. Rail transit can be a release valve for highway congestion, he said, taking enough vehicles off the road to help traffic move more smoothly.
Although ridership for trains and buses is at a 50-year peak, it remains only a tiny fraction of all trips nationally.
Conservative lawmakers in Washington and many state capitals tend to advocate road building, which better serves their primarily suburban and rural constituents. They question the effectiveness of enlarging big-city rail systems, which typically carry people from suburbs to jobs in the urban core, when so much commuting today is from suburb to suburb.
At 4:35 a.m. each weekday, Stan Paul drives out of his Southern California suburb with 10 passengers in a van, headed to his job as an undergraduate counselor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Some 80 miles and 90 minutes later, the vanpoolers finally arrive to start their workday.
On the return trip, Los Angeles' infamously snarled traffic often stretches their afternoon commute to three hours. Since Paul joined in 2001, he has spent roughly 1 1/2 years aboard the vanpool and traveled far enough to complete a round trip to the moon."These super commuters, they don't just give you a day's work," he said. "They give you their lives."
Transportation experts say Paul's long journey offers a warning for the future, when traffic rivaling a major holiday might someday be the norm for many more Americans.
"If we don't change, in 2045, the transportation system that powered our rise as a nation will instead slow us down," the Department of Transportation said in report earlier this year titled "Beyond Traffic."
"Transit systems will be so backed up that riders will wonder not just when they will get to work, but if they will get there at all," the report said. "At the airports, and on the highway, every day will be like Thanksgiving is today." (...)
Elected officials and transportation professionals generally agree on the nation's intensifying traffic congestion but are divided about how to address it.
The Obama administration leans heavily toward getting people out of their vehicles, a solution preferred by many urban planners. New highway lanes aren't enough, the theory goes, because they will simply attract drivers who had been taking other routes and encourage more sprawl. Soon congestion will be as bad as ever.
One alternative is to encourage people to trade suburban amenities for more densely developed neighborhoods where they can easily take transit, walk or bike to jobs, stores and entertainment.
"As the population surges, we're going to have more bottlenecks, so giving people another option is really important," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in an interview. Rail transit can be a release valve for highway congestion, he said, taking enough vehicles off the road to help traffic move more smoothly.
Although ridership for trains and buses is at a 50-year peak, it remains only a tiny fraction of all trips nationally.
Conservative lawmakers in Washington and many state capitals tend to advocate road building, which better serves their primarily suburban and rural constituents. They question the effectiveness of enlarging big-city rail systems, which typically carry people from suburbs to jobs in the urban core, when so much commuting today is from suburb to suburb.
by Joan Lowry and Justin Pritchard, AP | Read more:
Image: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
