Rush hour times decrease to "just" 36.1 hours per traveler; "only" 2.8 billion gallons of gas wasted
by Sebastian Blanco on Jul 8th 2009 at 10:17AM 
Silver lining. Opportunity. Sign of the times.
Whatever you want to call it, high gas prices and the dire economy have reduced national average rush hour traffic times for the second year in a row. In some cities, like Washington, D.C., traffic is getting worse, but the average U.S. driver spent "just" 36.1 hours in rush hour traffic in 2007 (no 2008 data is available yet), down from 36.6 in 2006 and 37.4 in 2005. These numbers were released by the Texas Transportation Institute, but they're likely not a sign of things to come. TTI says that "when the economy rebounds, expect traffic problems to do the same" but suggests that flexible work hours and adding more traffic capacity and public transportation options could relieve the upcoming stresses.
The drop in congestion meant that total wasted fuel also dropped. In 2007, 2.8 billion gallons were wasted, equal to three weeks of gas for each traveler. That's down, a bit, from 2.85 billion gallons in 2006. Gobs of time were also puttered away: TTI says that travelers wasted 4.2 billion hours stuck in traffic in 2007. That's equivalent to about a full week of work for each traveler. Who's up for telecommuting?
[Source: Texas Transportation Institute via NPR]
Photo by flickrized. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nrb 10:30AM (7/08/2009)
The math isn't working out for me.
36.1 hours is 2166 minutes.
Assume commuting 50 weeks a year and five days a week. That's 250 round trips, or 500 one way trips.
Are they saying the average commute is four minutes and twenty seconds? I don't buy it.
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W 12:20PM (7/08/2009)
I think they are saying that I waste 4:20 each trip sitting in slow moving traffic, which seems about right for me.
Matt 1:46PM (7/08/2009)
If you took your Bell 430 to work every day, like me, 4:20 would be about average.
nrb 2:41PM (7/08/2009)
W, you might be correct. It's just not stated that way in the ABG or NPR article. The Texas summary doesn't even mention it at all.
Five minutes of slow moving traffic is still quite a bit better than I deal with, but that's what averages are for.
Chris M 3:06PM (7/08/2009)
It isn't the "Total" commute time, it refers to how much "Extra" time that traffic delays cause, averaged over all commuters for the full year. Of course, some days there is no delays, and other days it takes far longer!
augustus 3:19PM (7/08/2009)
All this article tells me is that the rest of the country has an easy commute compared to Californians. Of course at the rate we are destroying our state and encouraging people to move to another state I don't think our traffic will be getting worse.
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