Area Congestion Takes its Toll in Time
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Area congestion takes its toll in time
Study says drivers lose 51 hours a year
By Jeff Ristine
STAFF WRITER
October 2, 2003
The typical San Diego area driver loses 51 hours a year to traffic congestion, according to a national study.
And conditions would be even worse without traffic-management efforts such as car-pool lanes and freeway ramp meters.
Congestion sucked up an estimated 116 million gallons of fuel in the San Diego area in 2001, twice as much as it did five years earlier, said the report by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. "Congestion extends to more time of the day, more roads, affects more of the travel and creates more extra travel time than in the past," researchers said in the annual "urban mobility study" of 75 metropolitan areas.
"Even smaller areas are not able to keep pace with rising demand."
The congestion figures for 2001 place the San Diego area in a tie for 18th under the study's main standard, dubbed the "travel time index." The index measures the amount of time added to trips because of congestion.
According to the study, the typical peak-period trip in San Diego takes 36 percent longer than it would if roads were free-flowing, yielding a travel time index of 1.36. If a trip takes 25 minutes in the dead of night, for example, it would last an average of 34 minutes during the morning or evening commute.
The congestion penalty adds up to 51 hours of drive time a year in San Diego or 68 million lost hours for everyone in the area put together. The 51-hour figure places the region exactly on par with the national average for all 75 areas studied, but a bit worse than the 47-hour average for areas of 1 million to 3 million residents.
"It just seems to get worse and worse," said Marie Falls, who drives between Rancho Peñasquitos and Mission Valley for work each day, as she filled her car with gasoline just before heading home yesterday. "I hate wasting all this time."
As usual, Los Angeles is worst – residents there are said to lose 90 hours a year in traffic. The Bay Area is a distant second at 68 hours a year.
Figures for the San Diego County urban area were derived from information on 163 miles of the 248-mile freeway system, provided by the California Department of Transportation.
San Diego's travel-time index didn't increase between 2000 and 2001, according to the study. But it had inched up every year since 1995, when the area was ranked 21st, and the time lost to congestion has doubled since 1988.
Nationwide, congestion accounted for 5.7 billion gallons of wasted fuel and 3.5 billion hours of lost time in 2001, the institute said. San Diego's 116 million-gallon share averages out to $524 per resident, the institute said.
The report said San Diego regional roadways are congested during 80 percent of peak morning and afternoon commutes, the sixth-worst rank in the nation.
But the researchers said public transit, car-pool lanes and traffic-management techniques such as roving tow trucks and ramp meters that regulate flow onto freeways make a significant contribution to reduced commute time. New transit service and car-pool lanes figure heavily in San Diego regional transportation planners' proposed projects for the next two decades.
"We can save a significant amount of time with solutions we now have available, and we can do so at a cost that's very low in comparison to what it costs to build a transportation system," said researcher Tim Lomax, a co-author of the study.
But the report also called for greater freeway capacity. It was sponsored in part by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association and the American Public Transportation Association, two groups that support transportation projects.
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Jeff Ristine: (619) 542-4580; jeff.ristine@uniontrib.com
Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.