Study Shows Decline in Congestion, but Challenges Remain
Posted on 09. Jul, 2009 by admin in CES, Economy, News
A silver lining of the recession has been a decrease in traffic. Americans spent an average of 36.1 hours in traffic in 2007, down from an all-time peak of 37.5 hours in 2005, according to a study released by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. The last time traffic congestion declined was in 1991.
The institute’s Urban Mobility Report shows just how closely traffic is tied to economic activity, but the silver lining of decreased congestion evaporates when the study considers just how massive this country’s transportation problems still are. Congestion eats up $78 billion from the economy by siphoning off 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel.
And, unfortunately, the traffic decline is a blip in an otherwise upward trend that in 2007 cost every American driver $750.
The most congested area, according to researchers who studied 439 urban areas, remains Los Angeles, with an average of 70 hours spent in traffic per commuter. Washington, D.C., came in second at 62 hours, while Atlanta, Houston and the San Francisco-Oakland area finished out the top five.
As Congress debates what to do about this slowly escalating mess in a new Transportation bill, the report offered several suggestions:
• Get as much use as possible out of the transportation system we have.
• Add roadway and public transportation capacity in places where it’s needed most.
• Change our patterns, employing ideas like ridesharing and flexible work times, to avoid traditional “rush hours.”
• Provide more choices, such as alternate routes, telecommuting and toll lanes for faster and more reliable trips.
• Diversify land development patterns to make walking, biking and mass transit more practical.
• Adopt realistic expectations, recognizing, for instance, that large urban areas are going to be congested but don't have to stay that way all day long.
As the $500 billion transportation bill stands now, it calls for $337 billion for highway construction, $100 billion for public transit and $50 billion to begin work on a new nationwide high-speed rail system.
To read the full Urban Mobility Report and all its data, visit .
