file photo by Boyd Loving RT 17
The five worst places to drive in the United States
Millions of people traveling for Thanksgiving will face daunting traffic problems that critics say have been magnified by Washington’s inability to move a long-term bill to pay for new highway projects.
With a nor’easter bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard this Thanksgiving, it’s expected to be an especially brutal few days on the road.
Congress hasn’t approved a long-term highway bill since 2005, and it’s become much more difficult to move legislation since then because of a variety of reasons, including the end of earmarks that directed money toward specific lawmaker-backed projects and a financial crisis and recession that made it tougher to move big-budget bills.
Business groups, labor unions and other players have pressed Congress since then to focus on infrastructure, but to little avail.
The crisis is getting worse in some ways, too, since the gas tax used to fund most highway improvements hasn’t been raised in decades and can no longer keep up with the need, according to advocates such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
1. Interstate 110 in Los Angeles
2. Interstate 80 in San Francisco
3. Interstate 35 in Austin, Texas
4. Interstate 678 in New York
The West Coast and Texas don’t have a monopoly on bad roads.
New York City ranked sixth on the INRIX traffic scorecard. It is also home to the worst road in the East Coast, according to Texas A&M in the form of a 3.1 mile stretch of highway running from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to the Bronx.
Known as Van Wyck Expressway, the road produced 690 hours of delays per mile and 1,086 wasted gallons of gasoline.
5. Interstate 95 north and south of Washington, D.C.
https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/225464-the-five-worst-places-to-drive-in-the-united-states
