
Virginia's $40 Toll Road Better Be the Future of Driving - em3rgent0rdr
https://www.wired.com/story/virginia-i66-toll-road/
======
tomohawk
The Northern Virginia traffic situation is more the result of a failure to
follow the projections put out in the 60s and build the required roads for the
expected growth. I66 was recommended to be a minimum of 4 lanes each way at
the time, but only half of that was put in. The number of roads and lanes on
those roads is totally inadequate.

The main driver was that Southern Virginia had the political power at the time
and refused to allocate money for roads in the north, preferring instead to
build multi-lane highways to nowhere in the south. It's all different now with
the explosion of the size of the federal government increasing the population
of the north so that they're now in the driver's seat - 30 years too late now
that the growth has occurred.

They did build the amazing HOV lanes on I95/I395 that manage to fit 2 lanes of
traffic into the same space where 6 lanes could have been built. The 2 lanes
change direction mid day further inhibiting traffic.

------
bob_theslob646
>The scourge we know as traffic costs the American economy about $125 billion
to traffic per year, according to traffic analytics company Inrix.

I never understood how they got these numbers.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
I don't know how they got those numbers either, although I could speculate on
a simple way to do a back-of-envelope calculation by Multiplying the
following:

* commuter average hourly wage * time spent in traffic (basically time the commute took in traffic minus the amount of time the commute would hypothetically take if drove at the speed limit)

That's easy although imperfect...might also want to account for other things
like delayed meetings due to traffic.

