TEXAS \u2014 Texas A&M researchers say commute times are increasing up to pre-pandemic levels in Texas. They shared what\u2019s driving up the traffic congestion and what improvements they say you can expect up the road.<\/p>\n
The average Houston and Dallas commuters spend the equivalent of more than eight days of vacation time per year just sitting in traffic, based on an Urban Mobility Report released by Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI).<\/p>\n
That news came as no surprise for Garland resident Christina Winston, who commutes to Dallas for work during the week. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes me an hour to get to work. It\u2019s supposed to be 27 minutes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
TTI says population growth is driving up traffic congestion and impacting the largest cities in the state, including Dallas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been estimating and now measuring mobility levels in urban regions in the U.S. since the late 80s,\u201d said David Schrank, a senior research scientist at TTI. \u201cCongestion is climbing. Most regions, we\u2019re nearing where we were pre-pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s latest\u00a0report shows Americans lost an average of 63 hours sitting in traffic in 2024, which is the highest level ever measured.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our key measures we use is the hours of delay per commuter,\u201d Schrank said.<\/p>\n
The report also reveals Dallas, Austin and Houston rank in the top 30 for U.S. cities with the worst commute times:<\/p>\n
The Urban Mobility Report ranks Los Angeles as first, with 137 hours of delay per commuter each year, above San Francisco and New York City.
\nHouston is the 15th most congested city, with 77 hours a year wasted in traffic.
\nDallas ranks 23rd, having 69 annual hours of delay.
\nAustin ranks 30th with 64 hours sitting in traffic.
\nSan Antonio ranks at 62 with 48 hours of wasted traffic time.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur message really hasn\u2019t changed. \u2018What do you do about this? Everything you can,\u201d said Schrank. \u201cYou need better management of the roads and better operations…public transportation where it makes sense. Anything and everything is the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those solutions will all come with a growing population and Texas-sized construction projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen these projects continue to wrap up, they will continue to make an improvement in the situation in each of these regions. It\u2019s just some patience is needed to get to that point,\u201d said Schrank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 Texas A&M researchers say commute times are increasing up to pre-pandemic levels in Texas. They shared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1570,102,223,82,27,1569,272,29499,840,15717,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-53126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-ctv","12":"tag-dallas","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-san-antonio","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","17":"tag-traffic","18":"tag-traffic-and-transit","19":"tag-transportation","20":"tag-valencia-jones","21":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}