Everyone Moved From the City to the Suburbs and Now the Traffic is Just as Bad
Over the last 30 years there has been a mass migration to the suburbs and with the latest housing boom even more homes were built. Now that everyone has moved to the suburbs and brought their bad driving habits with them, the traffic in the suburbs is just as bad, if not worse, as it was never designed for this level of traffic. In some suburb cities that were once quiet bedroom towns, no matter what time of day that you drive the traffic is insane. Yes that is a huge issue and let’s take a few examples;
1.) Houston, semi suburb in the Westheimer Corridor, traffic is a disaster.
2.) Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, New Port Beach, Pasadena, San Diego, Palo Alto CA, traffic is outrageous.
3.) Atlanta Suburbs all bad.
4.) North Boston Suburbs “free parking”
5.) DC Adjacent; “mixing bowl” and suburbs, bad anytime of day.
6.) Dallas-Ft Worth suburbs, are a disaster.
Having been to every city in the Nation over 10,000 people I already see it. Give me my Net-Centric Flying Car! Help. Even in Missoula Montana, they have a place the locals call “Dysfunction Junction” and it is a 15 minute wait in traffic (one intersection) in Montana? Nuts I tell you!
Many suburban areas were set up due to urban flight and they are “Bedroom Communities” then the bosses got tired of driving into town and so they brought their companies to the suburbs. Now the change is another paradigm shift “albeit” it started slow and is now in full-bloom everywhere.
I watched this trend in Southern CA, before the Silicon Valley Changes when small service businesses started getting called to residences for those who worked out of their homes. Lots of people, and nobody really ever did the stats on that other than Home Business Licenses at city hall, but most people never bothered to get one.
The average city with 100,000 people has about 1000-2000 members in the chamber of commerce and that is usually 10-20% of the businesses that have business licenses. About 10% or 10,000 per 100,000 are self employed with business licenses, but that number in reality is higher.
As things change, “Knowledge Workers” ie… “Business at the Speed of Thought” workers working out of their homes will continue to grow just as you showed in your study. 20-35% is not hard to imagine at all.