A report newly released by the Texas Transportation Institute finds Chicagoans are spending even more time in traffic. MPC’s LaBelle weighs in.
As if paying $2 for a gallon of gas isn’t reminder enough, Chicagoans just got more confirmation that they’re spending too much time idling in traffic.
What commuters once dubbed as “rush hour” is now actually three times that amount of time, according to a report released Monday, May 7, by the Texas Transportation Institute, a think tank at Texas A&M University.
Taken as a group, drivers in the nation’s 68 largest metros are wasting more than 4.5 billion driver-hours in congested traffic. That’s a man-hour loss worth $78 billion-a-year, which doesn’t include the fast-escalating cost of burning an excess 6.8 billion gallons of gasoline.
The study found that Chicago is, by one measure, the third most congested metropolitan area in the United States, with drivers here spending 40 percent of their time behind the wheel in some form of tie-up or slowdown. By another measure — time lost each year stuck in traffic — the region placed 23rd worst. As of 1999, the latest year for which data was available, the average Chicago motorist lost 34 hours per year to congestion, roughly triple the amount of time lost back when the study began in 1982.
All the stopping and starting has Chicagoans consuming an extra 403 million gallons of fuel per year, while the average expressway speed has slowed to 41 miles per hour compared to 51 back in ’82.
MPC is a close follower of the annual TTI report because it provides one of the few “report cards” on how our region’s transportation system is performing relative to others.
“Congestion is getting worse all over the country, and here too,” said Jim LaBelle, executive director of Business Leaders for Transportation, an advocacy group led by MPC, Chicago Metropolis 2020 and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.
Two years ago Business Leaders was instrumental in building public support for Illinois FIRST, the $12 billion state-federal infrastructure bonding program initiated by Gov. George Ryan.
LaBelle said that the 5-year build-out of Illinois FIRST should have a salutary effect on congestion here, especially by eliminating such bottlenecks as the infamous “Hillside strangler” at the west end of the Eisenhower Expressway. He warned, however, that state and local leaders needed to plan better for the longer term, what with the soaring cost of energy and the continuing growth of outer-ring suburbs inadequately served by public transportation.
Under the category “Travel Rate Index,” congestion caused Chicagoans to spend, on average, 40 percent longer than necessary to make a trip, ranking fifth worst in the nation behind Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Chicagoans fared better under “Travel Time Index” at seventh, compared to fourth in 1998, which likely is evidence, said LaBelle, of safer roadways or better response to accidents.
The causes behind the rise in traffic are many. But more importantly, what immediate solutions are at hand? Building additional roadways is a traditional solution, but more recently not the most popular. The report says that the need for roads exceeds the funding capability, let alone space or public approval.
“Congestion can become enough of an impediment that people will begin to seek alternatives” LaBelle said. Such alternatives include: working closer to home, telecommuting (working from home), use of public transportation, and the overall development of a region itself along patterns that lessen drive times.
Click here for the full TTI report.