INRIX Traffic Scorecard Reports
 

I guess it is obvious but I found it odd that increase in congestion is correlated with an increase in jobs, so traffic jams are a sign of a healthy economy.


http://www.inrix.com/pressrelease.asp?ID=1193

By analyzing traffic in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas in 2012,
INRIX revealed that drivers wasted an average of 42 hours in America’s Top 10 Worst Traffic Cities – the equivalent to one week of vacation. The table below represents the Top 10 Worst Cities for Traffic in America in 2012:


Rank City Hours Lost in 2012 % Change 12vs11 % Change Q1 13vsQ1 12

1 Los Angeles 59 -9% +6%

2 Honolulu 50 -23% +4%

3 San Francisco 49 -7% +3%

4 Austin, TX 38 +3% +8%

5 New York 50 -17% +10%

6 Bridgeport, CT 39 -19% +16%

7 San Jose, CA 31 +6% +13%

8 Seattle 35 -10% -11%

9 Washington DC 41 -18% -5%

10 Boston 31 -22% +30%


Los Angeles is back at the top of the list in 2012 after falling to number two in 2011 (behind Honolulu). This is likely due to the fact that Los Angeles County gained approximately 90,000 jobs in February 2013 – a growth rate of 2.3 percent. This is the fastest year-over-year growth in employment across the Los Angeles area since the recession began in 2007 .

2012...

Here's the website with more interactive data.
http://scorecard.inrix.com/scorecard/

Their top 10 world wide

Brussels
Milan
LA
Antwerp
Honolulu
London
SF
Manchester
Paris
Rotterdam

Austin is a foul place to try and get around.

NO one must want to live, work , or commute in those places :)

austin surprises me. for some reason i wouldn't expect a city that size to have traffic issues.

Honolulu is a surprise, too. When did paradise become a rat race?

I think Austin is cursed because it grew too fast in a very suburban way. Everything is everywhere and all over the place, unless it's downtown, which has a narrow and outdated freeway leading to it.

Have the new toll roads since about 2005 helped or hurt?(question to KevinfromTexas).

I find it amusing there are Interstates on Oahu.

Honolulu does make sense in one aspect: its not only on a relatively small island, but also hemmed in by mountains and ocean. i'd be surprised if there wasn't traffic.

Austin mainly runs along a north/south axis for reasons that are not important to this discussion. There is only one freeway (IH35) that runs the length of this corridor. It is horribly outdated and clogged with both local and through traffic. IH 35 is one of the busiest truck corridors in the US and carries all that NAFTA merchandise up from Mexico. Local population growth has been explosive. There have been no substantial improvements made to IH 35 since the 1980s. There is endless debate about what should be done, but nothing ever seems to happen due to a lack of funding and the incredible apathy of local residents who fear (rightly so) that any road project on IH35 will just lead to more congestion and chaos. There is another shorter north/south freeway route through southwest and north central Austin along the Mopac Freeway. It is also heavily congested and out of date. There is a current project underway to add one lane (tolled)on Mopac in each direction, which should provide some small measure of relief. Some other toll roads have been built in outlying areas. These roads in some instances just encourage additional sprawl but do little to reduce congestion which tends to back up on existing freeways that lead to the new tolled roads. Austin is a traffic nightmare with no solution in sight. There may be some light rail projects somewhere on the horizon, but don't look to these projects to reduce congestion. Meanwhile downtown Austin continues to explode with the construction of hotels, office buildings, apartment towers, and condo towers. Soon there will be a new medical school and medical complex added to the mix. The fact that it takes most residents an hour or more to drive to and from downtown during peak hours has not yet had any impact on slowing development downtown. Austin is really a crazy place when it comes to traffic problems. Surface streets in the central parts of the city both south and north of downtown are also usually clogged with traffic. For a metro of slightly less than 2 million people, it is quite amazing.

Nah....when I lived there in the 80's people knew the explosion was coming and hoped that not building freeways would slow things down. We saw feeding the car centric cultures of Houston, Dallas and San Antonio and didn't like what it was doing to those cities.....the car addiction is never fixed by cars alone...neither is the transportation issues in a major city. But guess what....people came anyway.

I do it on two wheels and it's so much better that way. I hate sitting in a can in traffic. I'd rather be rolling past it with free air conditioning.

Sweet. Unfortunately for the overwhelming majority of Austin(-ites?) they are in a can in traffic. Personally, Austin's traffic is the worst in Texas.

I'm surprised Seattle isn't higher. Getting around Seattle is absolutely insane.

Austonians?

And not really surprised at seeing all of the Bay Area here either. Whenever I am anywhere near the bay I avoid the freeways at all costs if possible. Sucks if I'm passing through and miss the two or three hour no-traffic window.

And as to the post's original premise, I think there are multiple studies out there correlating traffic congestion with economic productivity. Basically cities bring people which create prosperity, which attracts more people creating more prosperity....yadda yadda yadda....rinse and repeat.

I can only speak anecdotally, but considering how hard the recession hit the Phoenix area, traffic at rush hour does not seem nearly as bad as it did in 2007.

When I arrived in Austin in the 1970s, traffic was already bad, but manageable. There was a respite during the early 1980s recession, but other than that, it has just gotten worse and worse. Even Jimmy Kimmel (who is doing his show from Austin this week) commented to a reporter that getting around is difficult here. It's especially bad during festivals, but even in absence of something big happening, traffic is really intense.

Austinites. I don't know why they named that building that way. Maybe to confound non-Austinites?

As bad as it is or isn't in Austin, I still don't get how it can be worse than NYC. What's the metric for ranking these?

After being one of the worst for several years, Atlanta fails to make the top 10 - again! :)

Good question. I haven't been in NYC since 1989, so I don't know how it is. But getting in and out of downtown Austin can make your blood boil when you sit seemingly forever and don't move due to gridlock. Cycling is definitely a good way to get around if you don't mind risking your life.

So this afternoon it was only 2:15 p.m. and the freeway on the west side (Mopac/Loop 1) was already stop and go through the area north of the river. Coming back at 3:30 p.m., it was total gridlock along the same route. It gets noticeably worse each year.