James Lileks notes that people just love to tell stories about how bad they have it:

It's a reaction to the latest study, which puts our traffic in the Tokyo-New Dehli category, I guess. There are spots of the Twin Cities that have bad traffic, agreed. But right now I’m looking at this page of MnDot traffic cams , and it looks like a scene from some strange version of the apocalypse in which the cars experienced the Rapture and the people stayed behind. When these roads are choked all day, then we’ll have horrible conditions. For now we still have it pretty good. Really. If it makes you feel any better, people in Fargo are complaining about traffic these days. It’s worse than ever. Takes a fellow ten minutes to get to the other side of town. Ten! Right now someone in Antartcica is stuck behind another vehicle, thinking: this gets worse every year.

I have to admit though, having done the Maryland to Virginia commute for half a year a decade ago (and it hasn't gotten better since then), I'm very happy that I work out of home office, and that the commutes I do periodically have involve air travel.