Pity you big city highway commuters!!!

[Stig / Major Tom]

Drove out of downtown Tampa yesterday at 5:45pm.
99% of drivers were politely letting in the poor saps who have to merge everydamday!....but....I don't know how you folks do it on a daily basis.
Drive 6', stop. Repeat. 6 lanes of creeping cars - over the horizon.
Just as big a parking lot on the in-bound lanes. Why don't you people stay out there in the burbs??!!...don't come downtown!
Saw one suicidal motorcycle rider threading & sifting through 70mph traffic. And another poor youngster on the shoulder of the jam....with cell in hand, and chain hanging on the scortching pavement. ("feels like 106 °F" my cell said)
Would not do this commute.

Stig

Perfecting my "howyu doon?" greeting to all the homeless fellows. Nice bunch of Joes. Reminds me of my Yellow Springs buddies.

[monkeybongos]

Imagine the traffic in Jan-April when all the snowbirds and tourists are here.
It gets noticeably worse every year, w all the growth  (construction of housing & apartment complexes
is out of control!).  And this time of year, thunderstorms happen regularly around 5 pm, making the drive
that much slower and more terrifying.

Transportation planners don't know what to do.  We'll never afford mass transit for the masses.  Maybe for
a small percentage of commuters, but not enough to significantly reduce congestion or keep up w growth,
which no one seems to want to slow.

To me the solution is obvious:  encourage living close to work  (thousands of people commute from
Pinellas to Hillsborough County, instead of living in the same county they work in),
and commute by scooter!

[CROSSBOLT]

We spent a few weeks in the very area you are in, Stig when I went to RV Tech school, in the same season that monkeybongos is talking about! "Tourist" and "snowbird" season is the dead of winter in Florida! But, hey! That is where we graduated from 50's to 150's and attended MSF BRC and never looked back! Dealer was a putz, but what else is new?

[john grinsel]

Commuting on bike or even car in US can be pain simply because Americans do not know how to drive---Bubba in his oversized pickup gets upset if you get ahead-----I lived over 10 years in Tokyo, commuted, bike easy as you can go around/thru, even had cop direct up on sidewalk to keep moving---a couple of years in Seoul, same.  Lived/rode in Italy riding fun on bike-----Germany, spent over 20 years....lane splitting not legal but done---only idiots in Mercedes seem to try to open doors on you.    All this type of riding builds skills that Americans seem to lack---we seem to be the land of bike riders in tennis shoes, favoring cup holders!

[nm_ryder]

Eeww!

I have to say I would not trade my commute!  18 miles down Route 66 (as in the song, "Get your kicks, on route 66.") And it's a busy day if I see more than 6 cars. I don't even have to go all the way into town to get to the office.

I have a hard time grasping why/how people live with the congestion of city life.

[Viper254]

I lived in a very congested UK city for 5 years (standstill 0730-0900 and 1630-1800) and came to see it as something of a sport - I loved the filtering, the wiggling, the squeezing to get through town. I got a kick out of it on my old Suzuki Address 110, which was slim as a rake.

For me, the solution has been mentioned above - we'll move back to the kind of economy where people live near their work, eventually, as commuting will slowly become unbearable. I do a 100 milk round trip twice a week to a far flung office and always dread it.