Commuters: I Feel Your Pain

Commuters' wasted time in traffic costs $121B
By CHRIS TOMLINSON | Associated Press – 5 hrs ago


AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — An annual study of national driving patterns shows that Americans spent 5.5 billion additional hours sitting in traffic in 2011.

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute released a report Tuesday that found Americans are adapting to road congestion by allowing, on average, an hour to make a trip that would take 20 minutes without traffic. The Urban Mobility Report also says clogged roads cost Americans $121 billion in time and fuel in 2011.

It also determined that the 10 most congested cities are Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, New York-Newark, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle.

The report is one of the key tools used by experts to solve traffic problems. But the institute advises that every community has unique challenges and require different, multi-faceted approaches to solving congestion.

I plan my Friday Starkvegas errands quite carefully so as to avoid traffic jams. Last Friday, just as Mr. Big Food and I were finishing up the last errand, I received an unexpected phone call from Daughter C. letting me know she was back in her office. She had my color wheel in her office-- and I really wanted my color wheel-- so we had to backpedal against the flow. No matter how you looked at it, getting to Daughter C.'s office required a Left turn. (No. Multiple Right turns would not have worked. See above: "every community has unique challenges." Just ask the Experts!)

You should have heard Mr. Big Food cussin'. It took us about three whole minutes to maneuver out of the parking lot and onto a side street so we could scoot through the back streets. What a waste of time! Awful. Just awful. You should have heard Mr. Big Food cussin'.