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Gridlock and Growth: The Effect of Traffic Congestion on Regional Economic Performance

dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) greg@hartgengroup.net (M. Gregory Fields) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Traffic congestion increases costs to American businesses, workers and families. It increasingly takes more time and fuel to get where we want to go, costing us time and money. As traffic congestion worsens, it will significantly undermine the economic competitiveness of U.S. cities and regions.

Perhaps one reason policymakers have not done more to reduce gridlock is a lack of understanding about how congestion negatively impacts our cities and their competitiveness. What would be the benefits of achieving free-flow travel conditions on a regional scale?

This study examines the economics of congestion relief. The report, authored by David Hartgen and Gregory Fields, finds that reducing congestion can add billions of dollars in productivity and economic output for cities. Free-flowing traffic increases regional productivity, which also increases tax revenues for local governments.

Most major cities will find that wise infrastructure investments that eliminate gridlock and produce free-flowing road conditions will more than pay for themselves by boosting the region’s economy, and thus tax revenues. The study shows that reducing congestion and increasing travel speeds enough to improve access by 10 percent to key employment, retail, education and population centers increases regional production of goods and services by 1 percent. While seemingly small in percentage terms, this leads to tens of billions of dollars for a region’s employers and workers due to productivity and efficiency benefits.

17th Annual Report on the Performance of State Highway Systems (1984-2006)

dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) info@reason.org (Ravi K. Karanam) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EDT

In a sign that more and more areas are being impacted by traffic jams and infrastructure problems, 35 states are now reporting that at least 40 percent of their urban interstate highways are congested, up from 31 states the previous year, according to an annual study of the nation’s highways. With urban congestion even hitting South Dakota, the list of states without any clogged interstates is down to just three: Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

Drivers in California, Minnesota, and North Carolina are stuck in the nation's worst traffic - over 70 percent of urban interstate highways in those states qualified as congested. California earned the dubious honor of 'most congested' state - 83 percent of its interstates are congested, according to the 17th annual highway study by the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank Eighteen states now report that at least half of their urban interstate highways are congested.

Overall, 50.7 percent of the nation's urban interstate highways were congested in 2006, a slight 1 percent improvement from 2005, when 51.8 percent were jammed. The statistical improvement is due, at least partly, to many states increasing the declared capacities of their highways.

Deficient bridges were thrust into the spotlight in August 2007 because of the tragic Minneapolis bridge collapse. Minnesota actually ranks 5th best in the nation, with 13 percent of its bridges deficient. Of the nearly 600,000 highway bridges in the country, 24.1 percent were reported deficient and/or functionally obsolete in 2006, a minor improvement from 2005 when 25.5 were deemed deficient. At the current rate of repair it will take 62 years for today's deficient bridges to be brought up to date.

16th Annual Report on the Performance of State Highway Systems (1984-2005)

dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) info@reason.org (Ravi K. Karanam) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:00:00 EDT

Nearly 52 percent of U.S. urban Interstates are now congested and traffic fatality rates rose slightly, but road surface conditions and bridge conditions improved according to the Reason Foundation’s latest annual highway performance report.

"Gridlock isn't going away," said David T. Hartgen, Ph.D., the study's lead author. 'States are going to have to prioritize and direct their transportation money to projects specifically designed to reduce congestion if we are going to reverse this troubling trend."

Drivers in California, Minnesota, New Jersey and North Carolina are stuck in the worst traffic, with over 70 percent of urban Interstates in those states qualifying as congested.

The Reason Foundation study measures the performance of state-owned roads and highways from 1984 to 2005 in 12 different categories, including traffic fatalities, congestion, pavement condition, bridge condition, highway maintenance and administrative costs, to determine each state’s ranking and cost-effectiveness.

The report finds that fatality rates vary significantly from state to state. Massachusetts reported the lowest fatality rate - 0.79 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Meanwhile, Montana's roads were the deadliest, with 2.256 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. The national average was 1.453 fatalities, up slightly from 1.440 in 2004.

The study does find some good news for drivers. The percentage of roads in "poor condition" fell sharply for both interstate highways and major rural roads. Since 1998, the percentage of poor urban interstate mileage has been reduced by 31 percent. The number of bridges deemed deficient, meaning they are eligible for federal repair dollars, also fell slightly in 2005.

In the overall rankings, North Dakota and South Carolina took the top spots for the second consecutive year. Meanwhile, New Jersey's gridlocked highways, poor pavement conditions and high repair costs put the state last in overall cost-effectiveness for the eighth consecutive year.

15th Annual Report Performance of State Highway Systems (1984-2004)

dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) info@reason.org (Ravi K. Karanam) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EDT

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We Can Build Our Way Out Of Congestion

bob.poole@reason.org (Robert Poole) dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Tampa Tribune

The Tampa-St. Petersburg metro area is the second most congested in Florida and ranks 20th nationwide when it comes to the most hours stuck in traffic. Trips at rush hour take 33 percent longer than trips during off-peak hours.

But if you think that's bad, just wait until 2030. After absorbing 800,000 more people and an even larger number of car and truck trips, congestion will be significantly worse. That same trip at rush hour will take 50 percent longer than at off hours, making Tampa's congestion worse than Atlanta experiences today. What's supposed to be a 30-minute trip will take 45.

That forecast assumes that the transportation projects in the region's current long-range plan are implemented. The Tampa transportation plan proposes to spend $7.3 billion over 20 years for highway and transit projects but predicts that delays will increase a whopping 250 percent, from 158,000 hours daily in 2000 to 556,000 hours daily in 2025.

To which a motorist or a taxpayer might well ask: Do you mean that our state and local transportation agencies are going to spend $7 billion over the next 20 years, only to give us significantly worse congestion? Sad to say, the answer is yes.

That is because local transportation planners have bought into the idea that "we can't build our way out of congestion." In keeping with trends in many parts of the country, in recent years they have focused more and more on trying to reduce the amount of driving, proposing mass transit systems and high-density housing projects intended to "get people out of their cars."

Tampa planners cite a goal of "minimizing travel time and delay" yet give it only 16 percent weight in selecting projects. They recognize that the demand for highway travel is greater than the supply of road space, but instead of increasing road space in response to what people want, they hope instead to reduce the demand to fit within the limited available road space.

This is the approach California has been trying for the past 20 years. California stopped building freeways and started pouring billions of dollars into rail transit systems in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. Smart-growth land-use planning has been all the rage too.

Unfortunately, people kept moving to California cities and kept on driving. Transit use and carpooling today handle a smaller fraction of trips than they did 20 years ago. The result is that Los Angeles and San Francisco top the national charts in traffic congestion. Other cities that have lately switched to the California model - like Atlanta - have seen their congestion soar as well.

Our research suggests that adding highway capacity is a crucially important part of an effective effort to reduce traffic congestion.

A new Reason Foundation study modeled the hypothetical addition of enough capacity in every U.S. metro area to eliminate the worst congestion by 2030. For the Tampa Bay region, that would require adding 1,288 lane-miles to the existing highway system over the next 25 years - on freeways, toll roads, arterials and local roadways. We estimate the cost of that as $2.4 billion in today's dollars. That amounts to a bit under $39 per resident per year and is about a third of what the Tampa plan would spend.

Thus Tampa could actually reduce congestion if it chose to do so. That investment would save 63 million hours per year that otherwise would be spent stuck in traffic. The cost - just $1.52 per hour of delay saved - is one-eighth of the minimum cost for light rail proposals.

Where would the new capacity go? While our study did not get into this level of detail, some possibilities include the new beltway proposed by the expressway authority (about 360 lane-miles), as well as tolled express lanes (like those just opened on the Selmon Crosstown Expressway) on congested freeways such as interstates 275, 75 and 4. Many major thoroughfares that serve growing suburbs should be widened to handle the traffic that we know is coming.

The Tampa area is at a crossroads in transportation planning. Pulling one way are those who favor the California model: try to get people out of their cars by diverting transportation funds away from highways and into transit and land-use densification. On the other side are harried commuters just trying to cope.

There is no realistic alternative to highways for personal mobility, goods movement and bus transit, so we need to keep growing the highway system in step with demand for vehicular travel. Cities like Atlanta and Houston are now rethinking their planning to focus more on serious congestion reduction.

The Tampa Bay area is in competition with other cities in Florida and the whole Southeast as a place to live, work and do business. One of the factors that will make a difference in individuals' and companies' location choices is mobility: Does the transportation infrastructure permit smooth and reliable delivery of goods, trips to and from work, and personal trips for recreation and tourism? Those metro areas that can offer such mobility will do much better than those whose systems are increasingly gridlocked.

Which future do you want for the Tampa Bay area?

Robert Poole is director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation. David Hartgen is professor of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Their new traffic congestion study is available at http://www.reason.org/ps346/index.shtml and Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.

Seattle's Congestion Future Is Bleak Without More Road Capacity

dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) bob.poole@reason.org (Robert Poole) — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Seattle Times

When it comes to traffic jams, the Seattle-Tacoma area is the most congested in the Northwest, just ahead of much-smaller Portland, and ranks 12th nationwide. The area has a congestion index of 1.38, meaning that trips at rush hour take 38 percent longer than off-peak journeys. But if you think that's bad, just wait until 2030.

Over the next 25 years, after absorbing almost 1 million more residents and even more car and truck trips, that same rush-hour trip will take 79 percent longer than a trip made at off-peak times, making Seattle's congestion even worse than the gridlock experienced in Los Angeles today. A trip in Seattle that is supposed to take 30 minutes, will take over 52.

And by 2030, Seattle will have jumped up to the 8th worst commute in the nation.

This forecast comes from our new Reason Foundation study and assumes that all transportation projects in the region's current 25-year plan are actually implemented. The Seattle transportation plan proposes to spend $102 billion over 25 years, including $46 billion for transit and $49 billion for highway projects.

Many motorists or taxpayers might well be asking: do you mean that we are going to spend $102 billion over the next 25 years, and our congestion will be significantly worse after all the spending? Sad to say, the answer is yes.

That's because local transportation planners have bought the idea that we can't build our way out of congestion, so it's hopeless to try. In keeping with recent trends around the country they focused more on reducing driving, proposing mass transit systems and high-density housing projects intended to get people out of their cars. They know that the demand for highway travel will be greater than the supply, but instead of increasing road space in response to what people want they hope to reduce the demand instead to fit within the limited available road space.

This is the approach California tried for 20 years. In the 1980's California stopped building freeways and poured billions of dollars into rail transit systems in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego. Unfortunately, the planners couldn't close the door: people kept moving to California and they brought their cars with them. Transit use and carpooling today handle a smaller fraction of trips than they did 20 years ago. The result is that Los Angeles and San Francisco top the national charts in congestion. Other cities that have lately tried the California model have seen their congestion soar, as well. Seattle is one of them.

But the tide may be turning. To its credit, Seattle is among a handful of cities that have gingerly begun to investigate the costs and benefits of expanded highway capacity. And our new research suggests that adding highway capacity is the most important part of an effective effort to reduce traffic congestion.

Our study modeled the hypothetical addition of enough capacity in every U.S. metro area to eliminate the worst congestion by 2030. Seattle was one of the participating cities in that analysis. We found the Seattle region would require adding 704 lane-miles to the existing highway system over the next 25 years, on freeways, arterials, and local roadways. We estimate the cost of that as $4.8 billion in today's dollars. That amounts to a bit under $34 per resident per year, but is less than a tenth of what Seattle plans to spend anyway. So, just by re-focusing its present spending, Seattle could actually reduce congestion if it chose to do so. That investment would save 200 million hours of delay per year that would otherwise be spent stuck in traffic, and the cost, just 96 cents per hour of delay saved � and that is 1/ 20th the minimum cost for light rail proposals.

Where would the new capacity go? While our study did not get into this level of detail, one of most likely possibilities is to add a complete network of HOT or express toll lanes to the existing freeway system. Another possibility is adding truck-only toll lanes in selected corridors, as Atlanta and Los Angeles are now planning to do. Many major thoroughfares that serve growing suburbs should also be widened to handle the traffic that we know is coming.

The Seattle region is at a crossroads in transportation planning. Pulling one way are those who favor the California model: try to get people out of their cars by diverting transportation funds away from highways and into transit and land-use densification. On the other side are harried commuters just trying to cope. In reality, there is no realistic alternative to highways for personal mobility, goods movement, and bus transit, so we need to keep growing the highway system in step with demand for vehicular travel. Cities like Atlanta and Houston — and now Seattle — are beginning to re-think their planning to focus more on congestion relief, and we applaud this trend.

The Seattle region is in competition with other cities as a place to live, do business and play. Seattle's ace cards are its great environment and easy access to the world stage. But these will not be enough. A key factor in people and companies' location choices is mobility: does the transportation system permit smooth and reliable commuting, goods movement and personal trips for recreation and tourism? Those metro areas that can offer such mobility will break out of the pack, ahead of those whose systems are increasingly gridlocked.

Which future do you want for Seattle?

David Hartgen is professor of transportation studies at UNC Charlotte. Robert Poole is Director of Transportation Studies at the Reason Foundation. Their new traffic congestion study is available online at http://www.reason.org/ps346/index.shtml. Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.

Los Angeles-Like Traffic Jams for Everyone

dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Knight Ridder/McClatchy News Wire

The bumper-to-bumper traffic we see on our roads over Labor Day weekend demonstrates both how much we love the freedom our cars provide and how much time we spend sitting in those cars, going nowhere. Despite growing frustration, drivers, businesses, and political leaders have largely resigned themselves to a new reality: living with traffic jams. But living with it is going to become increasingly difficult.

Today, just four US cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and San Francisco-Oakland) have daily congestion delays that prolong peak-hour trips by more than 50 percent. That means what should be a 30-minute commute, takes 45 minutes. Over the next 25 years, 30 cities will join that club. And drivers in an unlucky 12 cities will face daily bottlenecks worse than the notorious traffic jams in today's Los Angeles — their commutes will take at least 75 percent longer than off-peak trips, according to a new report by the Reason Foundation. The economic cost — lost time, inefficiency, unreliable deliveries, and snarled schedules — is immense and saps the economy of $63 billion a year.

Before you pack up and move to Small Town USA, you should know that things are getting just as bad there. Boise, Idaho's congestion is expected to double and Albany, New York's is set to almost triple by 2030.

The federal government is spending over $286 billion over the next six years on highway and urban transportation, and cities and states are pouring in hundreds of billions more. At least $1.3 trillion will be spent on urban transportation improvements alone over the next 25 years. So how is it possible that we'll be worse off after all that spending?

Misplaced priorities.

We are wasting the dollars we have. Some of it is lost in local projects deemed �needed' like the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. But most of our well-intentioned long-range transportation plans focus on the wrong things and fail to deliver congestion-relief. Some cities, like San Jose and Charlotte, are crossing their fingers and praying people will embrace transit. In both cities less than 3 percent of daily commuters ride transit. Yet both are spending well over 50 percent of their money on transit projects. If massive numbers of people don't give up their cars - and there's no evidence they will - those cities and many like them will have condemned themselves to traffic purgatory. Indeed, instead of trying to reduce congestion most cities have resigned themselves to just slowing its growth a little.

How sad. For hundreds of years great cities kept up with infrastructure needs and adapted to new transportation technology. No more. Planners now say our goal is not to reduce congestion but to �provide choices' (carpools, buses, light rail) because "we can't build our way of congestion." But we haven't even tried. Over the last 30 years, vehicle-miles traveled increased by 143 percent while we added just 5 percent in new capacity.

Some planners oppose building roads because they fear we're paving over America (over 90 percent of the country is actually still open space) or that no matter how many new lanes we open or new roads we build, those too will soon be "filled up." But that is what is supposed to happen. You don't build roads hoping no one will use them. People change routes, travel times, modes, and sometimes destinations to take advantage of extra capacity. But the entire region flows better because these changes also loosen tie-ups on other freeways and streets.

A few cities have realized that gridlock is a significant economic threat and are taking steps to deal with it. Atlanta recently revised its transportation planning process, moving away from a transit focus by setting a congestion reduction goal and selecting projects that move toward it. Texas has initiated a massive mobility initiative for its largest cities, identifying specific actions, mostly new freeways, needed to reduce congestion significantly.

The good news in the Reason study is that reducing traffic congestion is neither particularly difficult nor costly. If extended nationwide, a mobility project focused on relieving congestion primarily through added road capacity would cost about $21 billion per year over 25 years, much cheaper than the ineffective alternatives we're planning now.

The payback in terms of saved travel time and more reliable travel would be huge - 7.7 billion hours saved each year. We need the political will to re-address continuing traffic congestion issues as we have dealt with them for hundreds of years: by providing needed capacity. Cities that figure this out will move out ahead of the pack economically while others slowly strangle.

David T. Hartgen, Ph.D., is professor of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of the Reason Foundation study "Building Roads to Reduce Traffic Congestion in America's Cities." An archive of Reason's transportation research and commentary is here and the latest on Reason's Mobility Project can be found here.

Building Roads to Reduce Traffic Congestion in America's Cities

dthartge@uncc.edu (David T. Hartgen) greg@hartgengroup.net (M. Gregory Fields) — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:00:00 EDT

Executive Summary

This report quantifies the magnitude of traffic congestion and the cost of its removal through the provision of additional capacity. Other studies in the Galvin Mobility Project examine the role of other means of addressing congestion as well as financing, project management, and other issues that go along with adding road capacity in urban areas.

We define and quantify severe congestion, in which peak-hour traffic volumes exceed road capacity, and estimate future congestion if trends continue. With the help of 32 participating urbanized areas, the report uses sophisticated traffic modeling techniques to determine how much additional capacity will be needed to relieve severe congestion. These findings are then extended to all 403 urbanized areas. The report then estimates the cost of providing that additional capacity. These costs include construction in each state, major bridge widenings, adjustments for induced travel, and requirements for some elevated or tunnel sections. Detailed results are provided for each city and state. We also provide a simplified state-level assessment for rural areas and for moderate urban congestion.

This report finds that severe traffic congestion is pervasive in large regions and is worsening throughout the United States. In the future even small, urbanized areas are likely to experience congestion common in mid-sized areas today. The cause of this increase is not wastefulness but increasing population and preferences for private mobility, combined with limited additions to road capacity. Nationwide, the number of lane-miles of severely congested roads is expected to increase from about 39,500 in 2003 to 59,700 in 2030. To relieve severe congestion by providing additional capacity, an additional 104,000 lane-miles of capacity (about 6.2 percent of current lane-miles) will be needed, costing about $533 billion over 25 years, in 2005 dollars. The amount needed—about $21 billion per year—is about 10-15 percent of the federal highway program over 25 years, about 28 percent of the cost of present urban transportation plans, and about 39 cents per day per commuter trip. However, the travel time savings are estimated at about 7.7 billion hours annually, so the cost per hour of delay saved is about $2.76. If moderate congestion and rural congestion are also to be addressed, an additional $304 billion will be needed.

We also find that congestion relief through provision of additional capacity is quite feasible, given current budgets. The benefits of an investment in additional capacity would be substantial. In addition to reduced travel time, other benefits include smoother traffic flow, reduced accidents, improved air quality through lower emissions, lower fuel use and operating costs, more reliable travel, lower logistical costs for manufacturing and delivery, more choices of jobs for workers and businesses and wider choices for consumers.

» Press Release
» List of Most Congested Cities
» List of Most Congested States
» USA Today Story

Interactive Maps

» Most Congested Cities in America in 2030
» Ranking the States by Congestion and Costs to Reduce Traffic

Full Study

» Building Roads to Reduce Traffic Congestion in America's Cities: How Much and at What Cost? (.pdf)

State-by-State Examination

Shows how congested each state and its major cities will be in 2030. Details how many lane miles are needed and at what cost. Projects the number of hours we can avoid sitting in traffic each year by relieving congestion.

» State-by-State Analysis of Future Congestion and Capacity Needs (.pdf)

» Alabama
» Alaska
» Arizona
» Arkansas
» California
» Colorado
» Connecticut
» Delaware
» Florida
» Georgia
» Hawaii
» Idaho
» Illinois
» Indiana
» Iowa
» Kansas
» Kentucky

» Louisiana
» Maine
» Maryland
» Massachusetts
» Michigan
» Minnesota
» Mississippi
» Missouri
» Montana
» Nebraska
» Nevada
» New Hampshire
» New Jersey
» New Mexico
» New York
» North Carolina
» North Dakota

» Ohio
» Oklahoma
» Oregon
» Pennsylvania
» Rhode Island
» South Carolina
» South Dakota
» Tennessee
» Texas
» Utah
» Vermont
» Virginia
» Washington
» Washington, D.C.
» West Virginia
» Wisconsin
» Wyoming

Appendices to Full Study

Appendix A (.pdf)
Appendix B: Detailed Methodology (.pdf)
Appendix C: Detailed City-by-City Data (MS Excel)
Appendix D: State Information (MS Excel)
Appendix E: State Information (MS Excel)
Appendix F: State Information, Rural (MS Excel)
Appendix G: Regional Urban Maps of Travel Time Indices (.pdf)
Appendix H: Risk Analysis of the Costs to Relieve Congestion (.pdf)
Appendix I: References (.pdf)

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