On the same day a national traffic study confirmed that Baltimore’s road congestion is as horrendous as it seems (we are the fifth worst in the nation, behind only Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles and Houston)  a Maryland Transit Administration blogger was bemoaning the lameness of mass transit in the city — in particular, city buses.

The juxtaposition ( in the local Twittersphere yesterday) painted a bleak picture of the prospects for getting from here to there in Baltimore.

As Jessica Keller told the tale, her life as a Canton-based, car-free commuter went downhill as soon as she took her job with the agency that  . . . runs the buses.

“My 2.2 mile bus commute turned into a 5 mile 1.5 hour bus journey.  Some days, my roundtrip commute could be three hours….THREE HOURS to travel TEN MILES.  I believe a stagecoach could make the trip faster,” wrote MTA Director of Service Development  Keller, in a post yesterday on her “Baltimore by Bus” blog.

You can be depressed by this, or  hand it to the MTA for being up-front about the problems — the office Keller directs  develops routes and schedules for MTA’s local bus service.