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.
In a booming economy, the transportation system is always going to be a lagging factor.
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 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.
Areas that are most successful in dealing with transportation issues take a multi-modal approach,
Each city needs its own 'bag of tricks' to address this growing problem.
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,
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.
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.
