Gridlock: Study names DC as the worst commuter traffic in U.S

MoonHowler

MSN.com:

Washington, D.C., beat out commuting misery stalwarts Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York for the dubious honor of worst rush hour congestion in the country, a nationwide traffic study found.

Rush hour congestion adds 82 hours of suffering each year to the average commute around Washington, D.C., according to the study by Texas A&M Transportation Institute and Inrix, a Kirkland, Wash., company that analyzes travel data. Other cities plagued by gridlock include Los Angeles, where motorists spend an extra 80 hours commuting, San Francisco with its 78 hours of delays, and New York with 74 hours.

Overall, drivers lose nearly 7 billion hours each year to traffic congestion – an average of 42 hours per commuter – and waste 3 billion gallons of fuel, according to the 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard.

“I think it’s pretty clear people are frustrated,” Tim Lomax, a co-author of the report at the institute, told USA TODAY. “It’s not just the average time. It’s that you have to plan around 45 minutes for a trip that ought to take 15 or 20.”

The average delay has doubled since 1985, the study found. For cities with less than 500,000 people, delays have quadrupled, the study found. By 2020, average delays will grow to 47 hours and the total delay will climb to 8.3 billion hours, the study projected.

 

We didn’t need a study to tell us we were the worst but it sure is nice to have documentation.

Armed gunman slays TV reporter and cameraman on live TV near Roanoke

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

A television reporter and a videographer for CBS affiliate WDBJ7 in Roanoke, Va., were shot and killed Wednesday morning as they were doing a live report. The incident was caught on camera and those at the station said they heard six to seven shots and then nothing as the camera fell.

The incident happened around 6:45 a.m. at Bridgewater Plaza — a shopping and entertainment center on Smith Mountain Lake in Franklin County — where the two were interviewing a woman with a local chamber group. Few details were immediately known, said officials with the WDBJ7.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said a suspect has been identified and is believed to be a disgruntled employee of the TV station. Federal law enforcement officials are aiding in the search for the gunman.
Read More

European immigration problems approach critical mass

MoonHowler

refugees

European immigration problems make ours look like a walk in the park.  According to the Washington Post:

BRUSSELS — Thousands of refugees, most fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been snaking northward through the Balkans in recent days, confronting a Europe woefully unprepared to deal with them at every step.

Most endured a perilous crossing to Greece aboard rafts and boats, some barely fit to sail. They traversed Greece, a nation paralyzed by economic crisis and too poor to handle a flow of people that in July hit a record high. At the border with Macedonia late last week, they trudged through a wall of riot police, who fought them back with tear gas before relenting. Now, the asylum-seekers, thousands a day, are racing into Hungary, which is rushing to complete a barbed-wire border fence by the end of the month to force them to seek other routes.

It is a long parade of misery unparalleled in Europe in recent years. But the continent has so far failed to agree how to respond. Amid a refugee crisis that by some measures is the worst since World War II, individual nations are being left to improvise their own measures. In Hungary, that is taking the form of 108 miles of barbed wire and fencing.

The crisis is shaking fundamental tenets of European life, including the principle of free movement between most of the nations of the European Union. It is fueling a surge of anti-migrant sentiment in the countries that are housing the bulk of the asylum-seekers, Germany and Sweden. And it is straining the weakest countries, such as Greece, that are on migration’s front lines.

“Unless we do something, we will become a lifeboat sinking under the weight of people holding on to it and drowning everybody, both those seeking help and those offering help,” said Janos Lazar, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, at a ceremony last week celebrating the founding of Hungary.

Read More