Posted on Tuesday March 16th by The Infrastructurist | 6,669
CLICK TO ENLARGE
How much time do Americans spend commuting in traffic? And how much worse has it gotten since 1997? The above diagram by Martha Kang McGill shows the number of hours a single driver wastes annually due to road congestion. The orange line indicates the loss or gain in wasted hours from 1997 to 2007. When it comes to worsening traffic, Texas is a clear winner, with Houston and Dallas both gaining around 20 hours in lcommuting time. All data is from the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Any analysis on why Seattle went down? Also, are there other cities that went down? What is the secret?
March 16th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Perhaps Seattle’s drop is due to the rail services introduced in that time?
March 16th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Can’t be the light rail–it didn’t open until 2008 unfortunately. Much more likely the aggressive commute trip reduction strategy: http://www.seattle.gov/waytogo/
March 16th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
It would be really interesting to see the data for the next decade. I know that Boston has seen a significant increase in public transportation users since gas prices went up in 2008, so I wonder if the number of drivers will decrease in response.
March 16th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
I’d like a link to the underlying data - particularly for areas not shown like Portland’s.
March 16th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Seattle’s drop in time could be due to the Sounder, which is different from its light rail.
March 16th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Link to data. The table of interest is table 1. Table 2 multiplies the above figures by the city’s population.
March 16th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Is it supposed to be ironic that the Time wasted in traffic is represented by a Speedometer?
March 16th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Houston and Dallas both pursue some of the most aggressive highway expansion schemes, yet both see the greatest increase in traffic congestion? Everyone take notice!
March 16th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
I’m not associated with the site nor with the designers of the diagram-but I looked at the sourced data and made a few more city charts.
If that doesn’t work, here’s the link: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v470/Cairo_East/More-Commutes.jpg
March 16th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
LA: that may because Houstona dn dallas are still experiencing net in-migration and job growth.
Also, if a commuter spends 1 hour commuting because he is stuck in traffic, that may be lousy, but it does not mean that he will switch to a trolley car if the door-to-door trip time still exceeds his car commute time because trolleys are really slow and require their users to spend time getting to and from stations. It’s not like people stuck in traffic in NY are unaware of the area’s rail system or somehow terrified of riding Metro North.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Seattle’s 97-2007 decline is probably more related to the dot-bomb than to all the other things mentioned.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
I think the Atlanta region was experiencing about the same rate of growth as Dallas and Houston during these years. It then also strikes me that they now have about the same rate of time wasted, according to this chart. And it seems Atlanta stayed the same (critical mass, so to speak, same with the LA basin which also experienced growth but at half the rate, yet the traffic remained the same rate). You can refer to Census data.
However, I do agree that door-to-door trip time is probably the most important denominator of what mode of travel an individual will use. You are right, a driver won’t switch to a trolley if the trolley is inconvenient, the station is distant, and the trolley is slow. There is no reason to. But there are a whole myriad of other related issues that also determine these choices, such as development patterns, trip cost, tolls, bottlenecks, distant stations, number of transfers and transfer times, a meandering trolley route with low (slow) service, and more. I think the most important issues exist specific to the development medium (auto oriented suburbs versus denser suburbs, high rises surrounded by parking versus dense midrises, etc). I lived in Houston from 2005-2009 and it is a sprawling autocentric megapolis.
The point that I was trying to make is that despite the population growth, building more roads still induces demand to use them (basic supply and demand logic). In Houston’s case, this is due to increased capacity on the highways, lack of alternatives to driving, and additional sprawl development caused by the highway. Because a highway system is a network, widening one road may create a new bottleneck further downstream, or on an entirely different road, because any car may be induced to the widened highway but have a destination on a smaller highway. There is also a phenomenon known as Braess’ Paradox.
March 17th, 2010 at 9:06 am
[...] How Much Time Do Motorists Waste Stuck in Traffic? (Infrastructurist) [...]
March 17th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
[...] The Infrastructurist → [...]
March 17th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
I also would like this kind of graph applied to logjammed regions, such as New England state roads, or the DC area
March 17th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I know that Boston has seen a significant increase in public transportation users since gas prices went up in 2008
You need to check your facts. Change in public transportation ridership in Boston from 2008 to 2009, as reported by APTA:
Heavy Rail: -3.22%
Light Rail: -7.77%
Commuter Rail: -0.94%
Trolleybus: -12.20%
Motor Bus: -0.62%
March 17th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
[...] Less congestion in Seattle 2007 vs. 1997; most other cities get worse. Guess what we didn’t do? Build lots of new roads. [...]
March 17th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I live in Seattle, and the population there has increased substantially from 1997 to 2007. Seattleites have realized the massive # of cons involving roads, and are moving towards more a transit based city. From 2005 to 2007 alone, transit ridership went up 23%.
Note, all the cities that built huge roads have increased traffic. Seattle realize that transit is cheaper, more sustainable, builds better communities, greener, and, if funded with even close to the #s with which roads are funded, far more convenient.
Also, linky, Ridership has seen a small decline because of the recession and the fact the OPEC is trying to lower the price of gas so we forget about our oil addiction and go back to using cars, just like they did in the 70s.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:48 am
[...] Read it. [...]
March 19th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Many of the freeway upgrades in the Seattle area have been direct-access transit center ramps from HOV lanes. Even more of these have come online since 2007. This vastly improves the performance of transit from these transit centers, and I’ve noticed that most commuter buses from these transit centers are nearly always packed full.
In 2007-2009, many serious bottlenecks were remediated, including the I-405/I-90 confluence, and the horrid I-405/SR-167 interchange. Further, HOT lanes have been installed on SR-167 and will probably be built elsewhere. Expect this number to continue to decrease even if the economy recovers.
March 23rd, 2010 at 1:21 am
Interesting the report also includes data from 1982 - good for a 25 year comparison in addition to the 10 year comparison shown above.
I’ve visualized the 1982 vs 2007 statistics here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frozenchipmunk/4455859759/sizes/o/
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:44 pm
# linky Says:
March 17th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I know that Boston has seen a significant increase in public transportation users since gas prices went up in 2008
You need to check your facts. Change in public transportation ridership in Boston from 2008 to 2009, as reported by APTA:
Heavy Rail: -3.22%
Light Rail: -7.77%
Commuter Rail: -0.94%
Trolleybus: -12.20%
Motor Bus: -0.62%
********************************************************
Hmmm…. do you think it is POSSIBLE that the reason mass transit ridership went down in THAT PARTICULAR ONE YEAR PERIOD might be due to fewer people commuting because they were unemployed?
March 27th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
[...] to Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report, commuters in many major U.S. cities are spending more time in their cars during rush hour traffic [...]
April 13th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
[...] of traffic actually went down from 1997 to 2007. In a recent blog post on The Infrastructurist, How Many Hours Do We Waste in Traffic in Major U.S. Cities?, an interesting diagram shows that hours wasted due to Seattle rush hour congestion dropped to [...]
April 14th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Seattle’s drop in congestion is due to the economy (especially the tech economy) shrinking in that timeframe. I live here and I know. Back in the Internet bubble days, traffic was insane here in Seattle, and — while it’s still bad — it’s not as bad here as it was then. I’m not sure why the same thing wasn’t seen in SF.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:19 am
[...] Source: Infrastructurist.com Sphere: Related Content Visited 4 times, 4 so far today [...]
April 27th, 2010 at 8:36 am
[...] has reported on a study done by the Texas Transportation Institute which compares wasted hours due to traffic in 14 major cities from 1997 to 2007. Out of the 14 cities in this study, only Seattle has reduced commuting times by approximately 10 [...]
April 27th, 2010 at 9:13 am
[...] The Infrastructurist recently posted an infographic depicting the amount of time wasted per year due to rush hour traffic in large metropolitan cities. [...]