Commutes just get longer,
transportation survey finds

updated 12:45 p.m. ET May 9, 2005

WASHINGTON - If getting stuck in traffic makes you want to roll down your car window and scream, a new national survey released Monday has bad news: Gridlock is getting worse.

Congestion delayed travelers 79 million more hours and wasted 69 million more gallons of fuel in 2003 than in 2002, the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2005 Urban Mobility Report said.

Overall in 2003, there were 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and 2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel for a total cost of more than $63 billion.

“Urban areas are not adding enough capacity, improving operations or managing demand well enough to keep congestion from growing,” the report concluded.

Honolulu became the 51st city in which rush-hour traffic delayed the average motorist at least 20 hours a year. The Hawaiian capital joins such congested areas as Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago — and Virginia Beach, Va., Omaha, Neb., and Colorado Springs, Colo.

Building costs tens of billions
The report was released the same day the Senate resumes debate on a bill that would spend $284 billion on highways over the next six years.

But that’s not enough money to solve traffic problems, according to highway and transit advocates.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimated it would take as much as $400 billion in federal spending over the next six years to solve traffic problems, based on a 2002 study.

Roads aren’t being built fast enough to carry all the people who now drive on them, according to the Transportation Development Foundation, a group that advocates transportation construction.

The number of vehicle miles traveled has increased 74 percent since 1982, but road lane mileage only increased 6 percent, the foundation said.

Tim Lomax, a co-author of the Urban Mobility Report, said the soft economy and slow job growth in 2003 meant that congestion got worse more slowly than it would have during better times.

“The upside of a slowdown in the economy is the congestion didn’t get worse very quickly,” Lomax said.

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