New report quantifies just how much a car commute crushes your soul

This Grist article raises some good questions, do we need more roads, smart growth or new metrics? An excerpt from the Article:
The solution is less sprawl, not more roads: The keenest criticism of the report is that it unjustly penalizes densely-packed cities, which are better than sprawly ones in basically all other ways. Greater Greater Washington explains:
The TTI report narrowly looks at only one factor: how fast traffic moves. Consider two hypothetical cities. In Denseopolis, people live within 2 miles of work on average, but the roads are fairly clogged and drivers can only go about 20 miles per hour. However, it only takes an average of 6 minutes to get to work, which isn’t bad.
On the other hand, in Sprawlville, people live about 30 miles from work on average, but there are lots and lots of fast-moving freeways, so people can drive 60 mph. That means it takes 30 minutes to get to work.
Which city is more congested? By TTI’s methods, it’s Denseopolis. But it’s the people of Sprawlville who spend more time commuting, and thus have less time to be with their families and for recreation.

https://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-20-new-report-quantifies-just-how-much-a-car-commute-crushes-your-soldId.20110204104550408