Congestion Continues to Worsen Nationally
17 November 1999
Congestion Continues to Worsen Nationally: Bay Area is Third Most Congested Area in U.S.
WASHINGTON--Nov. 16, 1999--Capacity Expansion On Congestion Relief
A new study about traffic congestion trends was released today by the Texas Transportation Institute showing that as congestion continues to worsen nationwide, the San Francisco-Oakland area remains the third most congested urban area in the country.
San Jose ranks in the Top 20, along with Los Angeles, San Bernardino-Riverside, Sacramento and San Diego. Transportation California and a national transportation research group have responded by proposing a variety of strategies to relieve urban congestion.
The congestion study released by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) again named Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as the urban areas with the worst traffic congestion in its annual rankings of congestion in the nation's 68 largest areas.
Two cities -- Portland and Boston -- were the newest entries into the worst 10. The worst 10 in order are: Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco-Oakland, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Boston, Atlanta, Portland and Detroit.
In its analysis of the TTI report, The Road Information Program (TRIP) issued a report called, "A Balanced Approach to Relieving Traffic Congestion," which pointed out that the amount of additional delay that traffic congestion causes for each motorist has more than doubled from 1982-1997 (the years for the TTI study).
"If traffic congestion is not adequately addressed, it will likely result in increased travel times, reduced leisure time to spend with families, encourage urban sprawl and lessen the productivity of the nation's workforce," said William M. Wilkins, TRIP's executive director.
Larry Fisher, executive director of Transportation California, the state's leading highway advocacy and public education organization, pointed out that California must address traffic congestion with the understanding that as population continues to grow, travel will continue to increase.
"In order to address those increases, improvements must be made to all aspects of the state's transportation system, including additional road capacity where it is appropriate.
"The sentiment that 'we're not going to build any more roads in order to stop sprawl and reduce driving' is equivalent to saying that we won't build any more schools so that people won't have any more children," Fisher continued.
The TRIP study identified a combination of traffic congestion solutions that should be adopted at the local level to help curb traffic congestion in the years ahead, including:
-- Expanding the regional capacity of the transportation system
through expansion of some roads and highways, increased
cost-efficient and convenient transit, and improved sidewalks and
bike paths.
-- Making improvements in traffic flow through improved traffic
signalization, ramp metering, reverse-flow lanes, quicker
accident response programs and improved driver information
systems.
-- Reducing the number of peak-hour vehicle trips, through
telecommuting and flex-time programs as well as increased levels
of ridesharing.
-- Improving community-based planning of strategies that may reduce
trip lengths. Other land-use strategies include allowing a better
mix of homes and shopping areas, improving the regional balance
of jobs and less travel-dependent housing if there is local
demand for such housing.
In its analysis, TRIP evaluated the TTI data for the past 15 years to determine whether the addition of road capacity has an impact on traffic congestion levels, traffic delays and increases in road capacity. The following conclusions were based on traffic congestion increases as compared with population growth increases:
-- Areas that were more aggressive in increasing regional road
capacity experienced congestion increases that were 40 percent
less than traffic congestion increases experienced in areas that
were less aggressive in adding lane mileage.
-- Metro areas with the smallest increases in congestion expanded
road mileage at a rate more than double that of urban areas with
the largest traffic congestion increases.
-- Metro areas that did the best job of minimizing travel delays
caused by congestion expanded their road system at a rate more
than double that of the metro areas that had the highest level of
traffic delay increases.
-- Traffic congestion increases as urban population density
increases. The average population density in the top one-fourth
of metro areas with the highest levels of traffic congestion was
45 percent higher than the average population density in the
one-fourth of metro cities with the lowest level of traffic
congestion.
-- Congestion increases as the amount of available lane mileage of
roads per driver decreases. The top one-fourth of metro cities in
the TTI study with the highest level of congestion had 18 percent
less road miles-per-driver available than the one-quarter of
metro areas with the lowest level of congestion.
-- There was no evidence that road mileage expansion stimulates
urban sprawl. In fact, urban areas that experienced the largest
increase in urbanization between 1982 and 1997 actually
experienced lower increases in lane mileage, relative to
population growth, than the communities that experienced the
smallest increases in urbanization.
NOTE TO EDITORS: The complete trip report and city-by-city data for the top 68 areas can be found on the TRIP Web site at www.tripnet.org.