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How bad will traffic congestion be in 2030? How much construction and how many new lane miles will each state and major city need to add over the next 25 years to prevent severe congestion? And how much will it all cost? The Reason Foundation study Building Roads to Reduce Traffic Congestion in America's Cities: How Much and at What Cost? and its addendum, A Detailed State-by-State Analysis of Future Congestion and Capacity Needs, provide in-depth answers to these questions. An interactive map ranking the states by congestion and costs to reduce traffic is here and a map of the most congested cities is here.

Louisiana

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(It should be noted that this analysis was completed before the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina; we have assumed that New Orleans will recover and will therefore need congestion reduction in the future.) To significantly reduce today's severe congestion and prepare for growth expected by 2030, Louisiana needs almost 1,250 new lane-miles at a total cost of $3.3 billion, in today's dollars. That's a cost of approximately $50 per resident each year. Louisiana ranks 23rd out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of most lane-miles needed and 22nd in the total costs of those improvements. If the state made these improvements, it would save over 17 million hours per year that are now wasted in traffic jams.

Louisiana has one city that currently suffers from severe congestion, which this study identifies as those areas with Travel Time Indices (TTIs) of 1.18 or higher. The port city of New Orleans is the 42nd most congested region in the United States, with a TTI of 1.19. This means that driving times during peak traffic are 19 percent longer than during off-peak times.

Unless major steps are taken to relieve congestion, drivers in New Orleans can expect to see a TTI of 1.31 by 2030. For an idea of how severe that level of congestion would be, note that this projection is equivalent to the traffic delays experienced today in places like Charlotte and Philadelphia. But Louisiana can significantly reduce this congestion problem by adding about 1,250 new lane-miles by 2030 at an estimated cost of $3.3 billion in today's dollars.

This investment would save an estimated 17 million hours per year that are now lost sitting in traffic, at a yearly cost of $7.87 per delay-hour saved. This does not account for the additional benefits not quantified in this study, including: lower fuel use, reduced accident rates and vehicle operating costs, lower shipping costs and truck travel time reductions, greater freight reliability, and a number of benefits associated with greater community accessibility, including an expanded labor pool for employers and new job choices for workers.

As Table 24 suggests, the other cities in Louisiana with populations over 50,000 are currently much less congested than New Orleans and have TTIs in the 1.04�1.05 range. However, the relative increase in delay projected over the next 25 years for these cities is 100 percent or more, which is higher than the Big Easy's 63 percent. (The 'delay' in the travel time is the portion of the TTI over 1.0.) Such significant increases will be sharply felt by local commuters. With projected TTIs of 1.08�1.10, cities like Alexandria, Monroe and Shreveport are facing future traffic delays similar to those currently experienced in the much larger cities of Dayton, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, respectively.

(click here for larger image)

» Return to Index Page: Study, State-By-State Data, Maps
» Return to Interactive Map of Traffic U.S. Congestion Statistics and Construction Needs

This information is excerpted from A Detailed State-by-State Analysis of Future Congestion and Capacity Needs and Building Roads to Reduce Traffic Congestion in America's Cities: How Much and at What Cost?

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