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| Hurry up and wait! Laredo traffic delay have been getting longer |
According to the Texas Transportation institute, the latest Urban Mobility Report for the state shows Laredo's traffic increasingly getting worse. The annual delay time for local commuters skyrocketed from just 1 hour as recently as 2004, to a whopping 12 hours in 2009. In the meantime, other border cities such as McAllen and Brownsville are handling their traffic flow a lot more efficiently. During the same period (2004-2009), Brownsville's commuter delay time went from 9 to 14 hours annually. McAllen, which has been picking up the reputation of "eating our lunch" did an excellent job of keeping their traffic flowing. Their annual delay time of 7 hours saw no increase whatsoever between the same period.
Some additional info coming out of this report lists the busiest roads in the State. As you might remember hearing in the news a couple of months ago, Laredo's Hwy 59 (Saunders) from IH-35 to Arkansas was ranked number 68 on the list and is estimated to be costing commuters an estimated $4,730,420 a year.
I guess we shouldn't be so surprised that the delay time for Laredo's commuters jumped 1,200 % in the last 7 years. Remember, our citizens had to wait about nearly 2 years before the traffic light at the intersection of Clark Boulevard and Newport Avenue was turned on.
I, too, have lamented Laredo's traffic woes for the last decade plus. That, combined with the glacial pace of any construction project (the Saunders improvement of the mid 1990s took more than a year and a half to just re-pave) makes the city's commuting experience akin to medieval torture.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am curious about is this: how is it improved?
I am not being facetious when I ask this.
But, my take on it is that there are no true wide thoroughfares in the city.
The main avenues of travel, McPherson, Del Mar, Saunders, Park, etc., are too narrow. That means, you do not have them all bisecting the city with at least 2 lanes of traffic each way, at least two left hand turning lanes, plus one right hand turning lane (a total of 5 lanes at major points). Instead, all Laredo streets, not just those I mentioned, are basically too narrow.
So, how is this solved, in your opinion?
I have had my frustrations traveling a mere mile East to West, trying to cross the Interstate, and I know that I could probably get out and run faster than the snail's pace I was moving.