Thanks to Bike to Work Barb for sending me this item: Congratulations to Spokane! According to ‘TheStreet and Bundle,’ Spokane has one of the top ten ‘best commutes’ in the country.
How did they determine this? By determining how much people spend each year for transportation and what cities are the worst in terms of expenses, plus the average commute length, miles traveled and annual hours delayed.
According to this survey, Dallas, TX has the worst commute with an average of 38 minutes and 53 hours of delay per year. Eugene, OR has the best with an average 17 minute commute and 11 hours of delay per year. Spokane had the fifth best commute, with an average time of 30 minutes and nine hours of delay per year. No word on where our Idaho neighbors came in at.
Proof we don't need the NSC.
There are other elments of the NSC you have to take into consideration such as freight movement (getting trucks off north-south routes to ease congestion) and air quality (all those cars stacked up at stop lights on Division and other north-south routes put a lot of pollutants into the air). Plus, we're fifth on that list, but could we be higher if there was a more efficient route to get folks living up north to downtown or vice versa?