If you live anywhere in the DC metro area than you have probably sat in traffic and asked yourself, “Why? There has to be a better way?!”
Doesn’t matter if you are on the roads in the middle of the night or middle of the day, let alone during rush hours. Why is it so bad here? Why does it take over an hour to go 20 miles? DC is an important city, why such a poor road lay out? As a DC commuter and one that has been a commuter in other large cities, here is my take: the road system is obsolete considering DC areas growth and size.
They try to update it by making “patches”, but it never helps. As a matter of fact, in some cases, it just costs me/us more money. Hot Lane’s peak hours can sometimes be $11.00, that’s almost a $1 a mile. I feel the roads in DC will never be able to catch up with the demand. (Well, unless the DC population takes a drastic decline.) One can always hope that the Federal Government will move back up to Philadelphia. When the roads were designed, I guess people never figured DC would grow as much as it has; that it would become as prosperous as a city that it is. It just keeps growing, too. One could wonder how much longer the infrastructure will be able to support the growth. How many more billions of our tax dollars will be spent or how much more will our cost of commuting increase to help pay for these road patches, just to have it fail again. For example, the toll increases on 267 were implemented to help pay for the Metro Silver Line. We pay for it with time and frustration when we sit in traffic or we pay for it with our wallets to go around the traffic. Obsolete, archaic, out of date or behind the times; whatever you want to call it, it puts a growing and thriving entity in jeopardy. I/we see every time we are just sitting in traffic, the lack of our productivity and frustration it causes.
Now think about your business. What are the “roads” your business travels on? In this day and age your business travels on technology. Technology is the pathway that takes your business, employees, clients, customers, and revenue where they want to and need to go. Now, picture a traffic jam in your technology. What’s that look like? Can’t be good. Has your business grown since you started? Does it continue to grow? Did you ever figure it would be as prosperous as it is today? When was the last time you updated your technology? If your technology is not built to handle the way you are doing business today, then DC roads are a perfect visual of what you are doing to your technology and ultimately, your company: jamming it up and slowing it down.
Is you infrastructure able to handle the business smoothly? Have you made “patches” to your software? These patches are just quick fixes to satisfy the immediate need, but by the time you are done it is already out of date. This is just wasting company time and money, plus your clients probably pay too. In the end, it causes frustration for all.
Unlike the DC area, you CAN get ahead of or at least catch up with the growth. Maybe it’s time to take a look at your business applications, where your business travels and see if it is causing a business/ financial traffic jam. Maybe you can’t tell. If you have grown or want to grow beyond where you first started, have a short conversation with KTL and let’s see together where you are with the roads of your business. Don’t do to your business what DC traffic does to you.
Contact Mark Lawrence, KTL Solutions Account Representative, at 301.360.0001.
