Everyone here has anecdotes and i agree with many of them.
However we are all part of that shitty traffic. Everyone is saying it's everyone but me.
I think the roads can't handle the population boom. We have speedy Californians mixing with slower seattlites. We have highways that weren't built to handle the traffic rushes, with major highways going down to one lane in places to make room.
We don't have a proactive transportation department, who appears to let things happen for a year or two before springing into brief action.
We have many people who were trained to drive in low density areas. I'm 22 and when i learned to drive much of the east side was 1 lane in each direction. Now much of the east side has the same roads with 3 lanes in each direction. Many people who grew up here with <1 mil people on the roads are now learning to drive with >2mil people on the roads. Add to that the aging population of people who are old enough to say "this road wasn't here when i was younger"or whatever and its a recipie of a fucking disaster.
People can't merge, cant respect the space every car deserves, don't treat parking lots as dangerous places, don't slow down in residentials but don't speed up on highways because of tickets.
It's a real fuckery and I'm moving to a less populated county soon simply because traffic will give me an aneurysm at this rate.
So many people play games when they drive. Don't use cruise control on long highway stretches. Don't let people in or don't take initiative. People take things personally. People don't put extra large mud flaps on their lifted trucks or sedans kicking up enough spray on the highway as a semi truck when it rains. Yes, it rains, welcome to the pnw please consider your fellow driver... But nobody has told anyone these things. Our driving test is a joke and our traffic enforcement has dissapeared. I remember people getting pulled over for not using a blinker or not wearing a seatbelt or making illegal turns. Now i just see people getting pulled over for speeding on the highway. Too many fucking people to police the little stuff. So people know they can get away with doing dumb shit. All of bellevue used their cars to force themselves into gaps. Everyone has 60k cars so nobody dares block anyone. Issaquah is far enough on 90 with the speed limit at 70 that suddenly everyone needs to prove they can drive fast. renton is full of angry low income young people and an even angrier police force that also happens to be the biggest crossroads in king county, so traffic drives extremely quickly. Out in Buckley and eunumclaw people hav3 long commutes so they don't just drive quick but they drive aggressively too. I was once cut off 16 times in a quarter mile! I went from shocked to. Mad to amazed! Seattle is a difficult city to drive in, especially for unfamiliar drivers, and is a metropolitan center so draw your own conclusions. Mercer island is... Well, a lot of things. Maple valley is full of people who work in seattle or bellevue for whatever fucking reason so the traffic quenes at 9 and 5 rush hours are miles long and that makes people very angry. On highway 18 there are two passing lane sections and many semi trucks that can't make it up the pass too fast, so you have impatient people rocketing up the side, preventing merges, cut offs at 70mph,and semis who are tired of g3tting passed without leaving space for the semi to do its thing. Lots of defensive merging, tailgating and 75mph sprints uphill to pass trucks. Then you have 167 which is the same story but once it goes down to 1 lane traffic backs up for a mile and suddenly nobody can do faster than 45.when it's 2 lanes, oh no suddenly everyone can go 65. Burien is full of old and slow people with stupid traffic lights that flip whenever a single fucking car hits a sensor, so traffic never moves...
Whew