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Gridlock Creeps Towards the Country

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

September 12, 2006

• Mass Transit Riders More Fit Than Drivers • Gridlock Creeps Towards the Country • Fewer Americans Like Driving • Nation's Traffic Troubles Intensify • Poor Timing of Traffic Signals Wastes Time, Money, Fuel • Study Links Traffic to Heart Attacks

Drivers desperate to escape urban sprawl won't find relief in small-town America. That's the message contained in a Reason Foundation study that predicts gridlock on U.S. roads -- already a pounding headache -- will spread beyond big-city highways within the next quarter-century.

Lead author David Hartgen, professor of transportation at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, has bad news for drivers:

• Gridlock will increase 51 per cent by the year 2030;

• Such mid-size cities as Charlotte, Tucson, and Orlando will experience congestion worse than Chicago has now;

• Bumper-to-bumper conditions in smaller cities (under 500,000 people) will occur more than twice as often as they do now;

• Large metro areas (more than 3 million) will face 65 per cent more gridlock.

The news is especially bad for 13 smaller cities where road congestion is forecast to increase by more than 1,000 per cent. Sioux City, IA ranks first, though Flint, MI also faces a probable increase of more than 5,000 per cent, according to the analysis.

Also on the future-gridlock list are St. George, UT; Albany and Columbus, GA; Lakeland, FL; Lancaster-Palmdale and Watsonville, CA; Santa Fe, NM; St. Charles, MD; Lewiston and Bangor, ME; and Lansing, MI.

The biggest metro area facing such a surge in auto traffic is Phoenix-Mesa, where the projected gridlock increase during rush hour is 1,089 per cent.

According to Hartgen, his dire predictions could be short-circuited by well-planned road construction and expansion and better traffic management, including timed traffic signals, installation of express highway toll lanes that don't require traffic to stop, and higher rush-hour tolls that encourage car-pooling or use of mass transit.

The money is available, he said, but needs to be allocated appropriately. Although the study recommends that state,city, and federal agencies spend at least $21 billion on road and transportation systems, they have already announced plans to spend much more.

Streetcars, trains, subways, and buses are viable alternatives too, said Virginia Miller of the American Public Transportation Association.

"Public transportation has a proven record of helping to reduce congestion that should not be ignored," she noted. In 2003, mass transit saved 1.1 billion hours of travel time in 85 urban areas, according to a report from the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.

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