In this month's Atlantic magazine, there's an interesting graphic with a few paragaphs about "Clogged Arteries" in our nation's metropolitan areas. You may have seen articles about this before: that our road, rail and air networks are congested and aging, which is causing us to fall into a competitive disadvantage with other nations in the world. It costs more to deliver goods when they're stuck in traffic. Productivity suffers when folks are stuck in airports.

According to the Atlantic piece, "The cost of congestion, including added freight cost and lost productivity for commuters, reached $78 billion in 2005." In the Washington, D.C. area, $2.3 billion was lost.

Tonight, I'll contribute about a hundred bucks to the total for 2008. I need to be in Wilmington for a funeral that begins at 11:00 tomorrow morning. When traffic flows, Wilmington is five hours away by car, and so, theoretically, I could leave at 5:00 AM tomorrow and get there in plenty of time. But if I leave Williamsburg at that time -- or anytime in the morning! -- I'll hit rush hour (more like three hours of rush!) when I get to, say, Fredericksburg and points north. How long, do you think, it would take to get to Wilmington?

What I'll do is leave tonight, after the Lenten service, and drive as far as I can before I need to collapse into a motel room (there's the $100). My plan is to get north of D.C. and Baltimore!

And then, let's see, after the funeral and a very short time of visiting with the family and friends, if I leave Wilmington by 1:00 PM, I ought to just beat rush hour in D.C. on the way home. Right?