Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on its Metro front page that the “D.C. area is No. 1 nationwide in traffic congestion, study says.”
As we noted last year, this is most assuredly false. The annual Texas Transportation Institute study, housed at Texas A&M University, measures travel times at rush hour across the nation’s large metro areas. What it doesn’t account for is the length of those trips and the time exposed to traffic congestion.
By failing to measure accessibility, and by extension access to opportunity, the report obscures the real debate (hint: it’s not solely about more concrete) we should be having about transportation investment, which needs to incorporate land use into its deliberations.