Earl Blumenauer: “for people who care about livable communities, the D.C. metropolitan area is either a test case or a basket case…”

“for people who care about livable communities, the D.C. metropolitan area is either a test case or a basket case; sometimes it is both. In terms of quality of life for the commuter, the experience in recent decades commands a horrid fascination. Between 1982 and 1994, there was a 69 percent increase in the time D.C. area commuters spent stuck in traffic. The average speed on the Beltway has decreased from 47 miles an hour to 23 miles per hour. In D.C., we are told that the average commuter spends 76 hours a year stuck in traffic; that is almost 10 working days sitting in the car absolutely immobile. In Northern Virginia this summer, nearly 1 out of every 3 days was in violation of ozone clean air standards. Mr. Speaker, of course, it is no secret that in this metropolitan area we are sprawling far more rapidly than we increase in population. From 1970 to 1990, Metropolitan Washington population grew 25 percent, yet the area that we consume increased over 60 percent. The suburbs here grew by a population of 18.3 percent while the District itself lost 17 percent of its residents. In the first 7 years of the 1990s, the District was hemorrhaging one person every hour. There are solutions which we know will not work; one is trying to simply pave our way out of congestion. The congestion in the United States will triple over the next 15 years, even if we increase capacity 20 percent.”