I swear I have no idea as to the accuracy: supposedly, if you drop a frog into hot water, it'll immediately jump out, but raise the temperature slowly and it won't detect the threat.
 
I don't think this an unfair analogy to where we are on traffic congestion. It gets worse each year. The average Metroplex driver has gone from wasting 43 hours per year creeping in traffic (2002) to 53 hours (2007). Compare that to ten hours in 1982!
 
The problem gets worse and worse but you can find plenty of people willing to deny that we have any problems and are perfectly willing to fight fixing them. We're being cooked in apathy, stubbornness, and ignorance of the facts.
 

From the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition:

URBAN MOBILITY REPORT RELEASED

The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) at Texas A&M University released this week its annual Urban Mobility Report, which assesses traffic congestion throughout the United States.
 
Dallas-Fort Worth continues to rank among the most congested regions: in the last five years, the metro area has climbed from 14th-worst to sixth-worst in terms of time wasted in rush-hour traffic (53 hours per person per year) and 14th-worst to eighth-worst in terms of fuel wasted (36 gallons per year).
 
To read the full study, visit http://tti.tamu.edu/ or go to the TRTC website and click on "Resources," then "Presentations & Reports."
 

Congestion delays are five times longer in the Metroplex than 1982, and have grown worse compared to other very large population areas. Source: TTI

As this region continues to grow — we're already the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country — the traffic problems will only grow worse. We are expected to grow from about 6 million today to over 9 million by 2030. As I've mentioned before, those forecasts from the North Central Texas Council of Governments have historically been wrong — they've always been too low!
 
A huge majority of North Texas leaders, from government and business, literally begged the Legislature this year to allow us to solve our problems ourselves. No one worked harder to make it happen than Sen John Carona. Other Garland representatives, like Rep Angie Chen Button, walked the aisles asking their colleagues for support, but it wasn't to happen. Much of the opposition came from individuals and organizations that attacked the effort as just an attempt to raise taxes. It will take taxes to fix our roads and highways. Always has, probably always will. (I say probably because the only other solution is toll roads, either publicly- or privately-owned, but those are being attacked, too.)
 
So are highways and rails important? The veins and arteries of any successful economic system are its modes of transportation.
 
For those interested in the who's who: the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition is very much the mirror organization of the Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition on which I serve as Garland's representative. Many of the members of both jointly serve on the Regional Transportation Council. Mayor Ron Jones serves on the RTC.