The region's badly overburdened road network is so close to breaking down on any given day that light rain, a big pothole, an overturned chicken truck or even sun glare can disrupt travel for thousands. During the evening rush hour, traffic comes to a standstill on the Capital Beltway in Virginia near the Maryland line. More than half of all commuters here now travel at least half an hour each way to work, compared with only a quarter who do elsewhere. They drive 15 million more miles each weekday than five years ago, enough every 12 days to travel to the sun and back. And they spend an average of 76 hours a year bogged down in traffic, a 150 percent increase from 1982 and the equivalent of two weeks of work.
Roads fill, robbing time and raising frustration, stealing spontaneity and diminishing civility.
Commuters cope in ways once thought unlikely just a few years ago. In the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of the District, a computer analyst pedaled yesterday to his downtown job that offers little challenge but doesn't require him to combat the traffic in Northern Virginia. The shuttle buses run by a major Fairfax County firm at its own expense were rolling, part of an effort to help employees who said they could no longer endure driving. Yet even as traffic took this and other tolls, it was growing worse. New development was being planned yesterday.