DC Traffic Not as bad as I though (or is it?)

The 24 worst highway bottlenecks, followed by the number of vehicles handled daily and annual hours of delay, according to a study by American Highway Users Alliance.

[ Yahoo! News ]

By their ranking the “Mixing Bowl” in Springfield, VA is ranked as 15th worst. The problem with their ranking is it is the total number of hours delayed by all people. I personally don't care about everyone else when I'm sitting in the traffic, I want to know how bad it is for me, annually, on average. If the list is re-weighted, taking into account the volume vs the delay, my beloved mixing bowl rises to #5.

Then, if you calculate the difference in rank between total volume and per-capita volume, you get what I call a “weakness” factor. This means that the less total volume you have the easier it should be to manage that traffic, so the higher the number the worse your mega-intersection is handled. Resort by this number and the “Mixing Bowl” now becomes #2. This means it is the 2nd worst managed major intersection in the country. The only worse managed traffic is in Cincinnati at “I-75 from Ohio River Bridge to I-71 interchange”, in what I'll call the crappiest intersection in America.

Strangely enough LA appears on the list 5 times. These 5 intersection all appear in the bottom 7 once ranked by weakness. This means that LA has lots and lots of freaking traffic moving through 1/2 dozen or so intersections, but they manage this traffic rather well, all things considered.

Attachment: Worst Intersections.xls