New York City / New Jersey / Connecticut Traffic Horrendous…. Millions of wasted man hours per year….

The failure of government to keep the highways safe, fast and reliable wastes the time of millions of American drivers as they attempt to use the federal highway system around New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey. There is a right to travel that allows the federal government to build the roads in addition to the federal need to have highways to move the military which is the justification president Eisenhower used to build the federal interstate system.

The failure shows up as the difference between the estimated and the actual trip time. the estimated time is provided by one of the “Map Apps” that shows the time to make the trip and the actual time. A recent trip from Southern Mass to PA showed an estimated travel time of 4.75 hours. Actual time was nine hours. The traffic exceeded the estimated volume by double. Traffic actually stopped in some places because the volume was too high for the highway.
Same for a trip around Washington DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
Several trips to North Carolina took 12 hours instead of the estimated six hours. The culprit was too many cars, i.e., too high of a volume of vehicles. The size of the highway was too small. The roads needed to be wider to handle more traffic.
Some of the roads are 12 lanes, six in either direction but the traffic often comes to a standstill.

To try to get on with their lives drivers exceed the so-called speed limits, often going over 90 miles an hour and sometimes exceeding 100 mph. while travelling in high traffic with cars travelling in packs.

The forecast is for conditions to get even worse.

THE SOLUTION
The present car designs allow an average operator to drive over 100 miles and hour. Increasing the speed limit has the practical effect of increasing the ability of the highway to serve more drivers.
Double and triple the number of lanes of road by building one or two decks above the present roads would double and triple the ability of the roads to handle more traffic.
Or in addition to decking some of the roads build new roads or improve the designs to provide more roads going in the right directions.

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