Worst Traffic Cities

I was doing my daily news reading, I'm a bit addicted to news... I came across and article on worst traffic cities and I am flabberghasted that NYC did NOT make it on the list!! How can that be??? Growing up about an hour outside of NYC among thousands of commuters, I would beg to differ. Case in point:

My brother and his wife had a flight out of LaGuardia on a Friday night at 7pm. They rented a car and left at 4 PM for this 45-60 minute drive INTO the city, mind you, against the traffic. Actually, there is no such thing in NYC as "against the traffic" so that last statement, well it's meaningless. The drill is always to rent a car and turn it in at the airport - cheaper than driving and parking, taking a shuttle and less of a hassle than finding someone to drive you into NYC on a Friday night!

I happened to at my mom's that night when they called me from somewhere in the city at around 6 PM. They had been in bumper to bumper traffic for 1 1/2 hours, had moved only 5 miles. After calling the airport, they found that they still had at least 1/2 an hour to go and wanted me to check on the airline (JetBlue) about any possible delays. I had my mom's cellphone on one ear with my brother, my mom's phone on the other talking to JetBlue about their options. I had maps, traffic reports, reservations pages all on the computer. We very quickly concluded that my brother would not make it, although we all agreed he'd given himself almost 3 hours to get there on time. The airline was VERY GENEROUS about rebooking them for the next morning, so I told my brother to keep the rental, turn around and come home. Which he did.

The next morning, for their 7 AM flight, they left at 4 am, arrived at the airport at 4:45 am, before it even opened, and waited until their flight left.

Do you really think NYC should not be on that list???

On a side note, their return flight, not dependent on traffic, happened to be the day of the huge NY area blackout - and they were then stuck in Seattle. Remind me never to fly anywhere with my brother!!

On a SECOND sidenote, my brother had booked their first hotel in Seattle through a website trip planner (can't remember which one) and in their fine print, you had to cancel any reservations 1 week in advance! so he ended up paying for that hotel night even though they never stepped through the door!