L.A. Once Again Ranks as No. 1 in Traffic Congestion

Next time you are caught in a traffic jam, and you grumble to yourself “This is the worst,” you’ll be right.

Once again, the Los Angeles metropolitan area was deemed as having the worst traffic congestion in America, according to an annual study of traffic patterns done by the Texas Transportation Institute released Tuesday.

That makes it 15 years in a row.

Researchers, using something called a Travel Rate Index based on 1997 traffic flows, calculated that it took motorists in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties 50% longer to complete a trip during rush hour than it did to make the same trip during off hours.

In San Diego, the delays were 31% longer, which tied it for 9th with Las Vegas and Detroit. Faring slightly better was the San Bernardino-Riverside area, where rush hour trips took 28% longer during rush hour, ranking it 16th in the nation on the travel rate index.

Motorists in the Los Angeles area are losing 82 hours a year in delays--maybe more than they get in vacation time, according to the study.

The institute estimates traffic delays cost Southland motorists $12,405 a year on average.

Part of that cost stems from an average of $1,370 spent on 1,108 gallons of fuel that researchers calculate are wasted by the typical Los Angeles motorist each year because of traffic delays. That is about 300 gallons more wasted fuel than New York City, which ranked second in that category.

If there is good news in the study, it is that traffic congestion in the Los Angeles area has leveled off in recent years.

The 82 hours motorists lost to traffic during 1997 compares with 79 hours lost in 1990.

Since the transportation institute began collecting figures in 1982, Los Angeles’ so-called peak period time delay index grew by 65%, but that is well below the 460% increase in San Bernardino-Riverside and even higher percentage growth in many other cities.

Los Angeles gets the No. 1 ranking in most categories because it had such a large head start, said Tim Lomax, a researcher with the institute, which is affiliated with Texas A & M University.

“It’s like building up a huge lead in the first quarter of a football game,” he said. “The other guys may catch up, but they haven’t yet.”

The annual studies by the institute provided fuel to both sides of a growing national debate about urban sprawl and the role that highway construction plays in it.

According to the Texas researchers, the Los Angeles area added 420 square miles of new urban development--including housing developments, commercial districts and schools--between 1982 and 1997. With more and more of the developments pushing farther and farther out, the existing freeway system simply can’t keep pace, adding to congestion, the researchers say.

“We think this shows that more road building is not the answer,” said Gloria Ohland, whose research organization, the Surface Transportation Policy Project, has been advocating alternatives to more freeway construction. As to what might be the best way to deal with the problem, she said, “There is no simple answer, no silver bullet solution.”

Larry Fisher, of Transportation California, which represents business and road building interests, said “the state needs to work harder than it is in developing projects to ease bottlenecks and congestion,” pointing to $1.7 billion in the highway trust fund, built up over the years by gasoline taxes, that could be spent.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Wasting Away in Traffic

Los Angeles again ranked No. 1 nationally in traffic-caused delays, according to an annual study by the Texas Transportation Institute. Here are the 10 areas ranked worst for traffic delays.

*--*

Annual delay in Area hours per driver Los Angeles 82 Washington, D.C. 76 Seattle-Everett, Wash. 69 Atlanta 68 Boston 66 Detroit 62 San Francisco-Oakland 58 Houston 58 Dallas 58 Miami-Hialeah, Fla. 57

*--*