According to a study released this week from Texas A&M University, the Dallas-Fort Worth area (yay! where I live) ranks fifth in the nation for the number of hours drivers waste stuck in traffic. Drivers waste an average of 58 hours a year going nowhere fast. What's worse, in the past 25 years, nowhere has gotten worse than DFW (in 1982, drivers wasted 10 hours a year).
Only Los Angeles (72 hours), Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Atlanta (all 60) rank worse. Even Houston, one of the most-populated cities in the country, is No. 6 on the list.
As we were driving back from Okla Homer, we hit gridlock (on a Sunday) in I-35W because of a wreck. It added nearly an hour to our trip, confirming that we need to move further from a metro center in the near future. In the meantime, our commutes are shorter than most, but we still need ways to maintain our sanity.
T-bone's Traffic Tips
• Have a really nice car, which will at least surround you in luxury while you're stuck on the highway. Our cars aren't fancy, but they are comfortable. Conversely, you might want a crappy car so when it overheats or something you can just leave it and never come back. Also, impromptu rush-hour crash-up derbies won't be so painful if your wheels are in the clunker category.
• Mount a microwave onto the front passenger seat (or make your front passenger hold it) so you can pop some popcorn. It's really hard to be too angry while you're eating popcorn.
• Horns are like e-mails, their intent is sometimes lost in translation. You can "happy honk" someone, but chances are they're too busy listening to a book on CD to get the message. Do what my father-in-law did: his truck has a PA system so he can actually speak into a microphone and have it amplified and projected from speakers in the grill. Nothing says, "Hey idiot! Get out of my way!" like the actual words. You can also use it for amusement. "Got any Grey Poupon?"
• Do crazy things to make stuck drivers around you laugh. Like mentioned in a post a few years ago, rather than put a cell phone to my ear I used a banana. Hilarity ensued!
• It is quite possible to catch up on all your written correspondence while in traffic. Start addressing Christmas cards and you'll be so far ahead of yourself come December!
• Yodel.
• Shaving or putting on makeup while driving is so passe. I say give yourself a sponge bath. Saves time and uses less water so it's good for the environment. Might help offset all those SUV emissions spewing from your pipes. Also might help amuse your fellow gridlockers!
• Drive backward. Hey, you're not going real fast anyway.
• Take the train! Seeing as there actually is some public transit available, I suggest using it. Much more fun is hopping on a random train without knowing where it will end up. Who needs a job anyway, am I right? Our lack of a comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, to me, is more to blame for our crappy traffic than even our 1 million-person population gain in the past 25 years.
• Ride yer bicycle! It's much safer when you are traveling faster than all the cars on the road. Don't, however, weave in and out of the stopped cars. Somebody might yell at you using their PA system. At the least, you might get popcorn thrown at you.
Our new vehicle has GPS and it is a huge help when you want to ditch the freeway and find a different way home. Check out alternative routes and it always coughs up a few. We've used it several times on the short trip downtown when the freeway stands still. We've seen parts of Fort Worth we never would have seen otherwise. It's like an adventure, which is better than white knuckle, teeth gritting gridlock.
Now if it could just get me to the mall around Christmas....
Traffic is incredible, everywhere. One wonders how that can be possible if the economy is so bad...