Last Tuesday was the presidential inauguration and downtown DC braced for a very large crowd. But a funny thing happened, there was no traffic. In this story, they examine how over four times the number of daily commuters entered the city on this day.
This proves that if people just work together using mass transit and ride sharing that we can have a dramatic impact on our daily commutes. On inauguration day, an estimated 1.8 million people got to their destination with more ease than the typical 400,000 daily commuters. So even with most of the bridges closed to traffic, four and half times as many people entered downtown DC.
On normal workdays in Washington, 40% of the commuters or 160,000 people drive alone. Single passenger vehicles are the biggest contributor to our nations gridlock problems. Getting more people to utilize mass transit, group rides, bike and walk would improve everyone’s daily commute.
I know the current thinking is that we need to greatly enhance our nation’s roadways and build more lanes. While this will help, it is going to cost us billions and billions of dollars as you can see in the stimulus proposal.
Last Tuesday was a historic day in many ways. In the spirit of cooperation and national unity, we saw a great number of people avoid the nasty traffic that plagues us every single day. I would like to see this type of togetherness become the rule, instead of the exception.
