The Richmond area’s traffic congestion is holding steady, with the average driver wasting about 20 hours per year, according to a national traffic study released today.

WASHINGTON—On a cold January morning in 2001, Mel Martinez, who was then the new secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was headed to his office in his limo when he saw some homeless people huddled on the vents of the steam tunnels that heat federal buildings. “Somebody ought to do something for them,“ Martinez said he told himself. “And it dawned on me at that moment that it was me.“