Columbus drivers spent 41 hours last year stuck in traffic
While you’re white-knuckling it through another morning traffic jam, think about what you could be doing with all that extra time, Columbus.
Binge-watch on Netflix. Finish that home-improvement project. Take a weeklong vacation.
Commuters here spent more than an entire workweek — on average, about 41 hours — stuck in traffic delays last year, according to a new report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
The report, released today, shows that the traffic congestion that plagued highways across the country before the recession has returned as more people head back to work and economic activity picks up. It used two factors to measure congestion: wasted time and wasted fuel. Traffic jams carried time and monetary costs to the tune of 7 billion extra hours behind the wheel and $160 billion nationwide in 2014, according to the report.
“If there’s no improvement made in the transportation system, it’s likely we’re going to see this congestion trend continue,” said Bill Eisele, senior research engineer and co-author of the study.
The institute used traffic-speed data collected on 1.3 million miles of roadway along with federal data to show how slow commutes can be and how much that can cost. In Columbus, the story is much the same as in previous traffic reports: not as bad as it could be.
The 41 hours of traffic delays the average Columbus commuter experienced in 2014 were a tick below the national average and within a few hours of previous years. The city ranks 45th worst, tied with Cincinnati, out of 471 urban areas surveyed. Cleveland and Toledo commuters spent an average of 38 extra hours stuck in traffic in 2014.
Compared with traffic juggernauts on the East and West coasts, though, Columbus’ gridlock isn’t so bad. Drivers in Washington, D.C., were stuck in traffic for 82 hours in 2014, the most of any city in the country, the report found. Los Angeles ranked second at 80 hours.
The worst areas have several things in common. They have huge populations and concentrated activity centers where people are trying to go, Eisele said. They also have geographic hurdles, such as rivers, that create choke points.
Columbus’ highway system, though, is relatively convenient. It has freeways concentrated Downtown and the I-270 Outerbelt to help access them.
Those 41 hours, though, break down to minutes wasted each day for Columbus drivers. A 20-minute drive without any traffic, for example, takes about 23.6 minutes in rush-hour traffic in Columbus. That measure has hovered around the same mark for the past 20 years, according to the report.
For the most important trips, the report shows Columbus drivers need to leave more than double the time they normally would take to make sure they arrive on time. A 20-minute trip with no traffic would require leaving more than 44 minutes to drive, the data show.
Lost time and fuel wasted in traffic jams cost the average Columbus commuter about $933 in 2014, or about $921 million for the entire city.
Congestion could get worse in the future if transportation options and infrastructure don’t keep up with the extra 500,000 people expected to call the Columbus region home by 2050, said Nick Gill, assistant director of transportation at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
“Growth is OK,” he said. “You can deal with it as long as you can plan for the transportation infrastructure to accommodate it.”
Eisele said the solutions to congestion problems come from a variety of sources, including government agencies and employers. Employers, for example, could allow more workers to work from home. Public agencies can add highway capacity, design better transit systems and make sure freeways are clear.
“What we need to do is invest in them all to the extent that we can,” he said. “Congestion, when you really think about it, is coming from a number of different sources.”
MORPC, Columbus and the Central Ohio Transit Authority all are in the midst of writing long-term transportation plans, Gill said. The Ohio Department of Transportation has several programs designed to keep highways clear during peak commute times, including one in which disabled trucks causing heavy backups are pulled to the side of the road, then removed later.
“We work hard to minimize traffic jams as much as possible,” said Matt Bruning, ODOT spokesman.
“You’re going to have car crashes, unfortunately.”