Reason Foundation

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.

North Dakota

[view other states]

To significantly reduce today's severe congestion and prepare for growth expected by 2030, North Dakota needs over 108 new lane-miles at a total cost of $148 million, in today's dollars. That's a cost of approximately $20 per resident each year. North Dakota ranks 45th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of most lane-miles needed and 46th in the total costs of those improvements. If the state made these improvements, it would save almost 852 thousand hours per year that are now wasted in traffic jams.

As Table 41 suggests, North Dakota really does not have a significant traffic congestion problem, although there are likely to be specific sites in the state where traffic does have some major adverse impacts. The three cities in North Dakota with populations over 50,000, Fargo, Bismarck, and Grand Forks, have Travel Time Indices (TTIs) of 1.04. This means that driving times during peak traffic are 4 percent longer than during off-peak times. While this TTI does not reach the 1.18 level that this study identifies as severe congestion, the relative increase in delay projected over the next 25 years is 75�125 percent, which will be sharply noticed by local commuters. (The 'delay' in the travel time is that portion of the TTI over 1.0.) To put things into perspective, TTIs of around 1.08 reflect current traffic in much larger cities such as Cleveland, Richmond-Petersburg, and Spokane. North Dakota could solve this limited problem by adding just 108 new lane-miles by 2030 at an estimated cost of $148 million in today's dollars.

This investment would save an estimated 852 thousand hours per year that are now lost sitting in traffic, at a yearly cost of $6.96 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.

(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?

Additional Resources:
» Reason Foundation's Mobility Project Main Page
» Reason Foundation's Transportation Research and Commentary
» Reason Foundation's Press Room

» return to top