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Traffic congestion got much worse in 2022 but is still below pre-pandemic levels

David Schaper

Traffic backs up on U.S. Freeway 101, which was closed near Montecito, Calif., on Jan. 9. Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP hide caption

Traffic backs up on U.S. Freeway 101, which was closed near Montecito, Calif., on Jan. 9.

CHICAGO — Millions of Americans returning to the office but getting there primarily by driving instead of taking public transit led to a significant increase in traffic congestion last year, according to a new report. The typical U.S. driver lost 51 hours to congestion in 2022, about an hour each week. That's 15 more hours lost to congestion than in 2021, and all that time wasted in traffic jams hit pocketbooks hard, costing the average American driver $869 in lost time, according to 2022 Global Traffic Scorecard by the mobility analytics firm Inrix. But traffic congestion across the country is still only about half of what it was before the Covid-19 pandemic, as the report indicates the amount of time drivers lost on average in bumper-to-bumper gridlock was about 50 percent below 2019's.

The Inrix report said the lessening traffic congestion patterns resulted from higher gasoline prices and the shift to hybrid work, with many office workers continuing to telecommute and work remotely at least some of the time. "2022 was shaping up to be a year of re-emergence and a return to a new, post-pandemic behavioral norm, but that halted with the rise in oil prices, supply chain disruptions, and inflation," said Bob Pishue, transportation analyst at INRIX. "We continued to see a rise in global vehicle-miles traveled, a return toward traditional morning and evening peak commutes, growth in public transportation use, and continued gains in downtown travel," Pishue added. "However, we have yet to fully rebound to pre-pandemic levels, and while we do anticipate a gradual increase over the coming years, we may see a small decline in 2023 should a global recession strongly take hold." Chicago drivers suffered the worst congestion among U.S. cities, wasting an average of 155 hours in commuting traffic last year, with an annual of cost per commuter of $2,618, followed by Boston (134 hours, $2,270), New York (117 hours, $1,976), Philadelphia (114 hours, $1,925) and Miami (105 hours, $1,773). Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Houston and Atlanta rounded out the top 10 U.S. cities with the most commuting time lost to congestion. Globally, only London had worse congestion than Chicago in 2022, with drivers there wasting an average of 156 hours in traffic congestion for the year. Paris ranked third, with drivers there losing an average of 138 hours to congestion. Interestingly, Chicago and Miami are the only U.S. cities in the top 20 where congestion is worse than it was before the pandemic. In Miami, the amount of time drivers lost to congestion last year soared 30 percent from 2019 levels, while Chicago's time lost is 7 percent higher than in 2019. Inrix says the company uses anonymous data from smart phones and GPS devices in cars, trucks and other vehicles, as well as data from other sources, to measure the congestion status of every segment of road for every minute of the day.

final report

Traffic Congestion and Reliability: Trends and Advanced Strategies for Congestion Mitigation

2.0 the nature of traffic congestion and reliability: causes, how they are measured, and why they matter, 2.1 what is congestion.

Congestion is relatively easy to recognize—roads filled with cars, trucks, and buses, sidewalks filled with pedestrians. The definitions of the term congestion mention such words as "clog," "impede," and "excessive fullness." For anyone who has ever sat in congested traffic, those words should sound familiar. In the transportation realm, congestion usually relates to an excess of vehicles on a portion of roadway at a particular time resulting in speeds that are slower—sometimes much slower—than normal or "free flow" speeds. Congestion often means stopped or stop-and-go traffic. The rest of this chapter is devoted to describing congestion and how we measure it, as well as its causes and consequences.

2.2 CAUSES OF CONGESTION AND UNRELIABLE TRAVEL

2.2.1 background: the seven sources of congestion.

Previous work has shown that congestion is the result of seven root causes, often interacting with one another. 5 These "seven sources" can be grouped into three broad categories, as shown below:

Category 1 — Traffic-Influencing Events

• Traffic Incidents – Are events that disrupt the normal flow of traffic, usually by physical impedance in the travel lanes. Events such as vehicular crashes, breakdowns, and debris in travel lanes are the most common form of incidents. In addition to blocking travel lanes physically, events that occur on the shoulder or roadside can also influence traffic flow by distracting drivers, leading to changes in driver behavior and ultimately degrading the quality of traffic flow. Even incidents off of the roadway (a fire in a building next to a highway) can be considered traffic incidents if they affect travel in the travel lanes.
• Work Zones – Are construction activities on the roadway that result in physical changes to the highway environment. These changes may include a reduction in the number or width of travel lanes, lane "shifts," lane diversions, reduction, or elimination of shoulders, and even temporary roadway closures. Delays caused by work zones have been cited by travelers as one of the most frustrating conditions they encounter on trips.
• Weather – Environmental conditions can lead to changes in driver behavior that affect traffic flow. Due to reduced visibility, drivers will usually lower their speeds and increase their headways when precipitation, bright sunlight on the horizon, fog, or smoke are present. Wet, snowy, or icy roadway surface conditions will also lead to the same effect even after precipitation has ended.

Category 2 — Traffic Demand

• Fluctuations in Normal Traffic – Day-to-day variability in demand leads to some days with higher traffic volumes than others. Varying demand volumes superimposed on a system with fixed capacity also results in variable (i.e., unreliable) travel times, even without any Category 1 events occurring.
• Special Events – Are a special case of demand fluctuations where traffic flow in the vicinity of the event will be radically different from "typical" patterns. Special events occasionally cause "surges" in traffic demand that overwhelm the system.

Category 3 — Physical Highway Features

• Traffic Control Devices – Intermittent disruption of traffic flow by control devices such as railroad grade crossings and poorly timed signals also contribute to congestion and travel time variability.
• Physical Bottlenecks ("Capacity") – Transportation engineers have long studied and addressed the physical capacity of roadways—the maximum amount of traffic capable of being handled by a given highway section. Capacity is determined by a number of factors: the number and width of lanes and shoulders; merge areas at interchanges; and roadway alignment (grades and curves). Toll booths may also be thought of as a special case of bottlenecks because they restrict the physical flow of traffic. There is also a wild card in the mix of what determines capacity—driver behavior. Research has shown that drivers familiar with routinely congested roadways space themselves closer together than drivers on less congested roadways. This leads to an increase in the amount of traffic that can be handled.

Highlight Box 1 discusses how the seven sources of congestion are related to the underlying traffic flow characteristics that create a disruption in traffic. We typically think of a bottleneck as a physical restriction on capacity (Category 3 above). However, disorderly vehicle maneuvers caused by events have a similar effect on traffic flow as restricted physical capacity.

Because the traffic flow effects are similar, traffic disruptions of all types can be thought of as producing losses in highway capacity, at least temporarily. In the past, the primary focus of congestion responses was oriented to adding more physical capacity: changing highway alignment, adding more lanes (including turning lanes at signals), and improving merging and weaving areas at interchanges. But addressing the "temporary losses in capacity" from other sources is equally important.

2.2.2 How the Seven Sources Cause Congestion

Congestion results from one—or the interaction of several—of the seven sources on the highway system. The interaction can be complex and varies greatly from day-to-day and highway-to-highway. The problem is that with the exception of the physical bottlenecks, the sources of congestion occur with maddening irregularity—nothing is ever the same from one day to the next! One day commuters might face low traffic volumes, no traffic incidents, and good weather; the next day traffic might be heavier than normal, it might be raining, and a severe crash may occur that blocks traffic lanes. An analysis of how the combination of these events conspires to make congestion was done in Washington, D.C. (Table 2.1). The worst traffic days experienced in Washington can be explained by the occurrence and combination of different events.

Another example of the irregularity in event occurrence can be seen in the frequency and duration of traffic incidents. Figure 2.1 shows how traffic incidents occurred on a 14-mile stretch of Interstate 405 in Seattle, Washington during peak travel periods for the first four months of 2003. Some days are relatively incident-free while others have numerous traffic incidents. Interestingly, at least one traffic incident occurred every day during the peaks on this highway. So, while some days are better than others, traffic incidents are an unavoidable fact on crowded urban freeways.

Another source of variability is traffic demand, which is rarely the same from day-to-day. On routes heavily used for commuting, weekday traffic is typically much higher than weekend traffic. (On routes in recreational, tourist, or shopping-dominated areas, weekend traffic higher.) Figure 2.2 shows this variability in dramatic fashion for Detroit freeways. It also shows that there is some variability on weekdays: Thursdays and Fridays are typically the highest traffic days for this period.

The congestion and travel time variability caused by planned special events are becoming a major concern for transportation agencies. In a recent survey of state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the American Highway Users Alliance, special events were cited as significant contributors to noncommuter congestion. These events may be categorized as:

• Major Sporting Events – This includes sports events within cities (e.g., major league baseball, professional football games) and college sporting events in relatively small university towns, especially college football. In fact, many college football games are attended by 100,000 spectators or more, and the associated congestion in towns and small cities (e.g., Ann Arbor, Michigan; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Lincoln, Nebraska) can overwhelm the local highway system on game days. The only saving grace is that usually there are no more than seven home games per year; nonetheless, congestion is significant on these days, requiring a lot of planning and active management by transportation and enforcement personnel.

Source: Vasudevan, Meenakshy; Wunderlich, Karl E., Shah, Vaisshali; and Larkin, James, Effectiveness of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) Under Extreme Congestion: Findings from a Washington, D.C., Case Study, proceedings of ITS America, 2004.

The events that impede traffic flow and cause travel to be unreliable often occur in combination. This diagram shows the number of days when different combinations of events occurred during the study period. For example, there were three days when incidents occurred—on two of these days only incidents occurred and on one day, incidents occurred in combination with high demand and bad weather. As most commuters know, "some days are worse than others." Pile high demand (say, a Friday before a three-day weekend) on top of heavy rain and a lane-blocking crash, and you've got the ingredients for severe congestion.

Note: Data shown are for the morning and afternoon peak periods (7:00-10:00 a.m. and 4:00-7:00 p.m.) for the period from January 1, 2003 to April 30, 2003. Traffic incidents occur in a fairly erratic pattern from day-to-day. Also, how long they last and how many lanes they block are fairly unpredictable. This erratic behavior contributes significantly to making travel unreliable for travelers.

Note: VMT (or "vehicle-miles of travel") is a common measure of highway usage. It is calculated as the number of vehicles using the system times the distance they travel. For the time period displayed, Sundays are the low points on the graph. Weekday travel can be more than 60 percent higher than Sunday travel. On weekdays, the trend toward highway travel later in the week (Thursdays and Fridays) is common in most urban areas. While commuting trips are relatively stable throughout the week, discretionary trips are higher as the weekend approaches.

• Auto and Horse Races – The rise in the popularity of NASCAR has led to increased congestion around race events.
• University "Move-in Day" – Several DOTs indicated that the start of fall term on college campuses create a surge in traffic for two to three days. This seems to be a problem in the smaller towns and cities with large universities, where the local highway network is not well suited to handling large volumes during off-peak periods.
• Festivals, State Fairs, and Major Concerts – Many rural areas sponsor these types of events lasting one or more weekends throughout the year. For example, the Bonaroo pop music festival in central Tennessee draws close to 100,000 people one weekend per year. These festival-goers cram onto highways not meant for such traffic, and many arrive several days early and stay a few days late.
• Seasonal Shopping – Holiday shopping around major mall areas was indicated as another source of noncommuting congestion, particularly on weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

As if the congestion picture was not complicated enough, consider further that some events can cause others to occur. For example:

• The presence of severe congestion can reduce demand by shifting traffic to other highways or cause travelers to leave later. High congestion levels can also lead to an increase in traffic incidents due to closer vehicle spacing and overheating of vehicles during summer months.
• Bad weather can lead to crashes due to poor visibility and slippery road surfaces.
• The traffic turbulence and distraction to drivers caused by an initial crash can lead to other crashes. 6 They can also lead to overheating, running out of gas and other mechanical failures resulting from begin stuck behind another incident.

All of this suggests the rather complex model of congestion shown in Figures 2.3a and 2.3b. From a practical standpoint, what is important to take away from this model are two notions: 1) the sources of congestion can be tightly interconnected, and 2) because of the interconnectedness, significant payoffs can be expected by treating the sources. That is, by treating one source, you can reduce the impact of that source on congestion plus have a partial impact on others .

The exact causal relationships among the sources of congestion are not yet well known, but consider the data shown in Figure 2.4. Displayed in this figure is the relationship between delay (both bottleneck- and incident-related) and traffic intensity. Several observations can be made from these data:

• For a roadway with fixed physical capacity, traffic must build sufficiently before either bottleneck delay or traffic incident delay occurs. That this is the case for bottleneck delay is obvious. However, for traffic incidents it does show that at low congestion levels, enough excess capacity exists to absorb the effect of most traffic incidents. (During the course of time, a few traffic incidents will block all traffic lanes causing substantial delay, but over a long history, these effects are washed out.)
• At the traffic intensity level where congestion begins (AADT 7 -to-capacity ratio range of 8 to 10), incident-related congestion is a substantial part of total congestion. As the traffic grows on a roadway with fixed capacity, bottleneck-related congestion becomes increasingly dominant.

Note: The starting point for congestion on most days is the amount of traffic and the physical restrictions on the highway (bottlenecks). Traffic varies from day-to-day throughout the year and special events may cause surges in traffic at unexpected times. See Figure 2.2 as an example of how much traffic varies even over as short a period as a month.

Note: Just as traffic varies across time periods, so does physical capacity. The operation of traffic signals changes capacity, often minute-to-minute. When roadway events occur, they also cause the physical capacity of the roadway to be lowered. (Traffic incidents and work zones can "steal" lanes, and bad weather causes drivers to space themselves out more.) Base-level congestion caused by bottlenecks can lead to increased traffic incidents due to tighter vehicle spacing and vehicles overheating in summer. Finally, the existence of extreme congestion can cause some drivers to change their routes or to forego trips altogether. Understanding how all these factors interact is the subject of ongoing research.

Note: The AADT/C level is a general indicator of the "intensity" of traffic trying to use a highway with fixed capacity. AADT is Annual Average Daily Traffic (vehicles per day) and C is the two-way capacity of the roadway (vehicles per hour). Bottleneck and traffic incident delay occur differently: bottlenecks cause delay at specific points while traffic incidents may occur anywhere along a highway segment. This is the reason for using 5- and 10-mile segments for the traffic incident delay above. The analysis shows that as traffic grows on a roadway with fixed capacity, traffic incident delay is initially higher than bottleneck delay. As traffic grows, bottleneck delay overtakes traffic incident delay, because it happens fairly regularly while traffic incidents vary in occurrence and characteristics.

This analysis also shows the interrelationship between the sources of delay identified in Figures 2.3a and 2.3b. Even with no changes in traffic incident characteristics, traffic incident delay grows as more traffic is added to a roadway. In other words, as the traffic level grows on a base of fixed capacity, the roadway is more vulnerable to disruptions caused by traffic incidents, or any other traffic-influencing event for that matter.

The exponential growth in bottleneck delay after the onset of congestion is a major reason why it is so difficult for agencies to keep up with congestion: once it starts, things get bad quickly. Introducing an extra vehicle to congested conditions means not only does that vehicle get delayed, it also adds extra delay to any other vehicles that join after it.

• At higher base congestion levels, bottleneck-related congestion grows at an increasingly faster rate. Researchers have long noted that delay increases exponentially (i.e., it goes "ballistic") with traffic level on a fixed capacity base. Why is this? Once a queue has formed and an additional vehicle joins at the back of the queue, you get a double whammy: not only is that vehicle delayed, but the queue is now longer and any new vehicles that join in will also be delayed by the now longer queue. The growth in delay for traffic incidents is more of a straight line, the results of the irregular occurrence of traffic incidents—they do not happen consistently like bottleneck delay does.

The fact that both bottleneck- and incident-related delay increase with base congestion level indicates that if physical capacity is increased, congestion for both sources would be decreased. In other words, Facilities with greater base capacity are less vulnerable to disruptions: a traffic incident that blocks a single lane has a greater impact on a highway with two travel lanes than a highway with three travel lanes. This feature highlights the interdependence of the sources mentioned above. It also reinforces the notion that adding physical capacity is a viable option for improving congestion, especially when made in conjunction with other strategies.

2.2.3 The Reliability of Travel Time and Why It Matters

What Is Travel Time Reliability? By its very nature, roadway performance is at the same time consistent and repetitive, and yet highly variable and unpredictable. It is consistent and repetitive in that peak usage periods occur regularly and can be predicted with a high degree of reliability. (The relative size and timing of "rush hour" is well known in most communities.) At the same time, it is highly variable and unpredictable, in that on any given day, unusual circumstances such as crashes can dramatically change the performance of the roadway, affecting both travel speeds and throughput volumes.

The traveling public experiences these large performance swings, and their expectation or fear of unreliable traffic conditions affects both their view of roadway performance, and how and when they choose to travel. For example, if a road is known to have highly variable traffic conditions, a traveler using that road to catch an airplane routinely leaves lots of "extra" time to get to the airport. In other words, the "reliability" of this traveler's trip is directly related to the variability in the performance of the route she or he takes.

It is becoming clear that we can no longer just define congestion in terms of "average" or "typical" conditions. One of the reasons was identified in Figure 2.4—as the traffic on a fixed capacity roadway, a highway becomes more susceptible to delay from traffic incidents, and in fact, to all traffic-influencing events. Because reliability indicates how much events influence traffic conditions, it is particularly important when it comes to defining operations strategies, which aim to control the effect of these events.

With this discussion in mind, from a practical standpoint, travel time reliability can be defined in terms of how travel times vary over time (e.g., hour-to-hour, day-to-day). Commuters who take congested highways to and from work are well aware of this. When asked about their commutes, they will say things like: "it takes me 45 minutes on a good day, but an hour and 15 minutes on a bad day."

Figure 2.6 typifies this experience with data from State Route (SR) 520, a major commuter route, in Seattle, Washington. If there was no congestion on this 11.5 mile segment, travel times would be around 11 1/2 minutes; on President's Day this was the case. On other days, the average travel time was 17.5 minutes, or an average speed of 40 mph. But when events (traffic incidents and weather) are present, it could take nearly 25 minutes, or 37 percent longer. Commuters who take SR 520 corridor must plan for this unpredictable variability if they want to arrive on time—the average just will not do.

In other words, they have to build in a buffer to their trip planning to account for the variability. If they build in a buffer, they will arrive early on some days, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the extra time is still carved out of their day. And this is time they could be using for other pursuits besides commuting.

What Value Does Providing Reliable Travel Times Have? Improving the reliability of travel times is significant for a number of reasons:

• Improvements in reliability are achieved by lessening the overall variability due to the seven sources of congestion, mainly traffic-influencing events. In other words, improvement strategies targeted at reliability decrease the delay due to traffic-influencing events (e.g., traffic incidents, bad weather, and work zones). This produces a double benefit: not only is variability reduced but the total congestion delay experienced by travelers is also reduced.
• Reducing total congestion saves time and fuel, and leads to decreased vehicle emissions.
• Reducing congestion at international border crossings leads to lower transportation costs and benefits the national economy as a whole. Further, reducing congestion on United States highways for freight moving between Canada and Mexico fosters international trade. Therefore, congestion on United States highways has a large influence on the efficiency of international trade .
• Treating three major components of unreliable travel—traffic incidents, bad weather, and work zones—also leads to safer highways. By reducing the duration of these events, we are reducing how long travelers are exposed to less safe conditions.
• Commuters as well as freight carriers and shippers are all concerned with travel time reliability. Variations in travel time can be highly frustrating and are valued highly by both groups. Previous research 8 indicates that commuters value the variable component of their travel time between one and six times as much as average travel time. And the increase in just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing processes has made a reliable travel time extremely important. Significant variations in travel time will decrease the benefits that come from lower inventory space and the use of efficient transportation networks as "the new warehouse." Therefore, in both the passenger and freight realms, evidence suggests that travel time reliability is valued at a significant "premium" by users.

2.2.4 How Travelers, Operators, and Planners View Reliability

Despite our simple definition of travel time reliability as the variation in travel times over history, different perspectives exist:

• Travelers want to know information about the specific trip they are about to make and how it compares to their typical or expected trip;
• Similarly, operators want to know how the system is performing now in relation to typical conditions; and
• Planners want to know how the system performed last month or last year in comparison to previous time periods.

As we have already seen, some days are better (or worse) than others in terms of congestion, and there is quite a bit of variation from average or typical conditions on any given day. Figure 2.7 displays this variation from the traveler and operator points of view. Shown are travel times in the heavily congested I 75 corridor in central Atlanta for all Thursdays in 2003. The average and 95th percentile travel times are shown along with the actual travel times from two specific Thursdays. January 16 was clearly a "bad" day in this corridor while September 4 was "better than average." For both travelers and operators, a constantly updated display of travel conditions compared to baselines would be valuable information to have. In fact, at least one traffic management center (Houston TRANSTAR) posts this sort of information on their web site in real-time. 9 It should be noted that currently we do not have the ability to predict what is going to happen—a difficult task given the uncertainty of unpredictable events like incidents or sudden, intense weather. We can only compare what is happening now to historical conditions, but research is currently underway on this topic.

Still, the ability to predict with some certainty what travel time will be in the near future is of great interest to operators and travelers. Why is this important? If a commuter has a routine activity that must occur every day—such as picking up children from day care—they must plan on an extra amount of trip time just to be sure they do not arrive late. The same goes for local trucking firms engaged in pickup and delivery of goods. Looking again at the data in Figure 2.7, if a traveler starts in the corridor at 5:30 p.m., on the average Thursday the trip will take about 12 minutes. But history has shown that to be safe, they have to plan for about 18 minutes (50 percent more) to have only a small chance of arriving late; they have to build in a buffer . These are not huge numbers—but this is a short corridor (4 miles). The difference is, however, a large percentage. If similar conditions exist over the rest of the commute, then the extra time starts to add up quickly. With this simple approach, an extreme event can cause great problems for an individual trip, but at least we can compute a reasonable probability of arriving on time.

Note: Comparing what is happening on the highway system right now to "typical" (average) and "extreme" (95th percentile) conditions provides both operators and travelers with information that can lead to actions. For example, the afternoon of September 4, travelers could see that congestion was lighter than usual and could schedule additional activities. January 16 on the other hand was a heavy congestion day and as it unfolded, operators could post diversion messages to try to control it.

Planners are most interested in how things change over a longer period of time, though the question of "are things getting better or worse" is of general interest as well. In the I 75 corridor in central Atlanta, travel times in the afternoon peak period have increased and reliability has decreased between 2001 and 2003 (Figure 2.8). Monitoring of performance trends like this is becoming more common at transportation agencies. As discussed in the next section, performance monitoring is a major emphasis in operations and planning.

Note: By comparing the average travel times in 2001 and 2003 (the blue lines)), it can be seen that average congestion levels have increased in this corridor. At the same time, travel time reliability has decreased, as shown by the increase in the 95th percentile travel times.

2.3 TRACKING CONGESTION

2.3.1 why monitor congestion.

Monitoring congestion is just one of the several aspects of transportation system performance that leads to more effective investment decisions for transportation improvements. Safety, physical condition, environmental quality, economic development, quality of life, and customer satisfaction are among the aspects of performance that also require monitoring. 10 Congestion is intertwined with all of these other categories since higher congestion levels have been associated with their degradation.

In addition to facilitating better investments, improved monitoring of congestion can lead to several positive outcomes:

• Improved Performance –The information from operating systems can be used by the operating agencies to alter hours or methods of operation to improve the system. Performance measures can target, for example, before/ after effects of recent programs or the amount of productivity lost from congested conditions.
• Improved Communication – Performance measures that include travel time, delay, or other easily understood concepts can provide better ways to communicate system conditions.
• Program Justification – Performance measures and a before/after data collection program can be very effective at identifying the effect of a range of freeway and arterial management actions. Many of these actions cannot be easily assessed using models.
• Funding Enhancements – In most recent campaigns for funding increases, pricing projects or increased funding flexibility, performance measures have played two key roles. They can be used to demonstrate improved conditions or use of existing funds to show that current agency actions are appropriate and beneficial. The measures and data also can be used in public accountability pledges to demonstrate the effect of the proposed programs.

2.3.2 Congestion Performance Measures

Travel time as the basis for congestion performance measures.

The performance of the highway system in terms of how efficiently users can traverse it may be described in three basic terms: congestion, mobility, and accessibility. While researchers have different definitions of these terms, we have found it useful to define them as follows:

• Congestion – Describes the travel conditions on facilities;
• Mobility – Describes how well users can complete entire trips ; and
• Accessibility – Describes how close opportunities (e.g., jobs, shopping) are spaced in terms of the user's ability to access them through the transportation system.

Congestion and mobility are very closely related and the same metrics and concepts can be used to monitor both. Accessibility is a relatively new concept and requires a different set of metrics. Most the data that are currently available describe facility performance, not trip performance, although new technologies are emerging that will allow for direct monitoring of entire trips.

One of the principles that FHWA has established for monitoring congestion as part of its annual performance plan is that meaningful congestion performance measures must be based on the measurement of travel time. Travel times are easily understood by practitioners and the public, and are applicable to both the user and facility perspectives of performance.

Temporal Aspects of Congestion: Measuring congestion by times of the day and day of week has a long history in transportation. A relatively new twist on this is the definition of a weekday "peak period"—multiple hours rather than the traditional peak hour. In many metropolitan areas, particularly the larger ones, congestion now lasts three or more hours each weekday morning and evening. In other words, over time, congestion has spread into more hours of the day as commuters leave earlier or later to avoid the traditional rush hour. Definition of peak periods is critical in performing comparisons. For example, consider a three-hour peak period. In smaller cities, congestion may usually only last for one hour—better conditions in the remaining two hours will "dilute" the metrics. One way around this is not to establish a fixed time period in which to measure congestion, but rather determine how long congestion exists (e.g., percent of time where operating conditions are below a threshold.)

Spatial Aspects of Congestion: Congestion spreads not only in time but in space as well. Queues from physical bottlenecks and major traffic-influencing events (like traffic incidents) can extend for many miles. Congestion measures need to be sensitive to this by tracking congestion over facilities or corridors, rather than just short highway segments.

Table 2.2 presents a small sample of congestion performance measures (metrics) that can be used by agencies to monitor trends.

2.3.3 Methods Used to Develop Congestion Performance Measures

Figure 2.9 shows how travel times can be developed from data, analytic methods, or a combination. Clearly, the best methods are based on direct measurement of travel times, either through probe vehicles or the more traditional "floating car" method, in which data collectors drive specific routes. However, both of these have drawbacks: probe vehicles currently are not widely deployed and the floating car method suffers from extremely small samples because it is expensive and time consuming. Further, since many performance measures require traffic volumes as well, additional collection effort is required to develop the full suite of performance measures. Use of ITS roadway equipment addresses these issues, but this equipment does not measure travel time directly; ITS spot speeds must be converted to travel times first. (The Appendix provides a description of the equipment used to collect these data.) Other indirect methods of travel time estimation use traffic volumes as a basis, either those that are directly measured or developed with travel demand forecasting models. Two examples of how FHWA is developing travel times with these methods follow.

Monthly Urban Congestion Report

Since 2000, FHWA has been assembling volume and speed data from urban traffic management centers. These data are primarily from ITS roadway equipment, although some cities are exploring the use of probe vehicles to capture travel time. Data from 29 cities are currently obtained annually from participating traffic management centers. Some of these cities are now providing data on a monthly basis, and these monthly data are used to track citywide trends month-by-month. Figure 2.10 shows an example of how these data are presented. As more cities participate—and as surveillance coverage increases in existing cities—these data will provide a way for FHWA to monitor monthly changes in congestion. (Section 3.0 presents additional analysis of the data used in this program.)

Freight Performance Measurement Initiative

The tracking of congestion within cities is dependent on having an intensive system of surveillance to collect vehicle speeds (through roadway detectors) or travel times (using toll-tagged probe vehicles) at closely spaced points on the roadway. Outside of major metropolitan areas, such surveillance does not exist. To complement urban congestion measures and get a better picture of total system performance, FHWA is developing a system to monitor truck travel on intercity corridors that have significant freight volumes. FHWA is partnering with the American Transportation Research Institute and the trucking industry to use existing satellite-based systems that track truck movement for freight and fleet management purposes to support transport system performance measurement. Additionally, FHWA is exploring using similar methods to measure delay at major international border crossings. Figure 2.11 shows an example of how this system has been applied to develop travel times on 10-mile stretches of Interstate 5.

2.4 CONGESTION'S CONSEQUENCES

The nation's local, regional, and national transportation systems play a vital role in creating access to goods and services which sustain and grow our nation's economy. Planners and economic development experts recognize that congestion is an economic development issue because it thwarts business attraction and expansion, and reduces the quality of life for residents.

Transportation system users have developed strategies to deal with increased congestion and reduced reliability. In the short term, we might change our mode or time of travel. Over the longer run, congestion might influence our decisions about where we live and work. The same holds true for businesses. These types of adjustments might reduce the impacts of congestion to us, but they still do not entirely eliminate the economic consequences for a region.

Trucking Impacts. Congestion means longer travel times and less reliable pick-up and delivery times for truck operators. To compensate, motor carriers typically add vehicles and drivers and extend their hours of operation, eventually passing the extra costs along to shippers and consumers. Research on the trucking industry has shown that shippers and carriers value transit time in the range of $25 to $200 per hour, depending on the product being carried. The cost of unexpected delay can add another 20 percent to 250 percent. 11

Impacts on Businesses. Congestion increases the costs of delivering goods and services, because of the increased travel times and operating costs incurred on the transportation system. Less obviously, there may be are other costs, such as:

• The costs of remaining open for longer hours to process late deliveries;
• Penalties or lost business revenue associated with missed schedules;
• Costs of spoilage for time-sensitive, perishable deliveries;
• Costs of maintaining greater inventory to cover the undependability of deliveries;
• Costs of reverting to less efficient production scheduling processes; and
• The additional costs incurred because of access to reduced markets for labor, customer, and delivery areas.

The business value of time delay and market access act together to affect the profitability and revenue potential associated with doing business in a state or region. When one area is affected by congestion more than others, the relative competitiveness of these areas also shifts. The result, then, is that businesses tend to stagnate or move out of areas with high operating costs and limited markets, while they locate and expand in areas with lower operating costs and broader market connections. The magnitude of these changes varies by industry, based on how strongly the industry's total operating cost is affected by transportation factors. The evidence seems to indicate that regional economies that are fostered by clusters or "agglomerations" of many interrelated firms are better positioned to counter the higher operating costs due to congestion than economies that are not.

Household Impacts. Households have both financial budgets and what is termed "time budgets" that are both impacted by congestion. Households plan their activities around the available time budget as well as around their financial budgets. As vehicle operating and maintenance costs increase with rising congestion, the budget for some types of activities or expenditures decreases. The perceived "quality of life" of a neighborhood is diminished as well, when the safety, reliability and the convenience of the transportation system decreases.

Regional Impacts. Regional economies are affected by these household and business-specific impacts. Diminished cost competitiveness and market growth opportunities are tantamount to a reduced ability to retain, grow, and attract businesses. Additionally, the redistribution of business and household activity to outlying areas and the direct delay for trips that are not diverted or otherwise changed both lead to decreases in air quality, increases in public infrastructure investment requirements, and potential impacts on health and quality of life factors. 12

• Providing a Highway System with Reliable Travel Times, Future Strategic Highway Research Plan Area 3 , Transportation Research Board, September 2003, http://www4.trb.org/ trb/newshrp.nsf/web/progress_reports?OpenDocument .
• This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "secondary crashes"—crashes that would not have occurred unless an earlier one in close proximity occurred. Possible causes of secondary crashes include rapidly growing queues caused by the first crash and rubbernecking by motorists.
• Average Annual Daily Traffic – the amount of traffic that moves on the average day. Computed as simple average of all 24-hour traffic throughout the year. The AADT-to-capacity ratio is similar to the volume-to-capacity used in many transportation analyses, except the former uses 24-hour total traffic while the later uses hourly traffic.
• Cohen, Harry, and Southworth, Frank, On the Measurement and Valuation of Travel Time Variability Due to Incidents on Freeways , Journal of Transportation Statistics , Volume 2, Number 2, December 1999, http://www.bts.gov/jts/V2N2/vol2_n2_toc.html .
• http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/.
• More detail on monitoring comprehensive transportation system performance may be found in: A Guidebook for Performance-Based Transportation Planning , NCHRP Report 446, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 2000.
• Federal Highway Administration, Freight Transportation: Improvements and the Economy ; https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/improve_econ/ .
• Weisbrod, Glen, Vary, Don, and Treyz, George, Economic Implications of Congestion , NCHRP Report 463, Transportation research Board, 2001.

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As Traffic Roars Back, Neighborhoods Outside Manhattan Feel the Pain

With transit use lagging and truck deliveries and car ownership rising, congestion across New York City is likely to be worse after the pandemic than it was before.

By Winnie Hu ,  Patrick McGeehan and Nate Schweber

From gridlock on Fifth Avenue to backups at the Holland Tunnel, traffic has come roaring back in New York City after largely disappearing at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

But even as cars have returned, a pandemic that has transformed countless work routines and shopping habits is now upending long-established traffic patterns, shifting the congestion that has paralyzed Manhattan for years to the city’s other boroughs.

Some neighborhoods are being choked by more vehicles than they have ever seen before, with traffic snarls fueled by a plunge in transit use and car pooling, soaring car ownership and a surge in delivery trucks trying to keep up with an e-commerce boom.

The skyrocketing traffic is not just maddening to drivers; it has made the city’s streets deadlier for pedestrians and cyclists — traffic fatalities have risen to their highest level in nearly a decade — and contributed to higher levels of climate-changing emissions.

Having workers and delivery drivers trapped in cars also means a loss in productivity, another obstacle to the city’s recovery.

“Out-of control congestion costs families and businesses billions of dollars in lost time and opportunities,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a transportation advocacy group. “If the streets aren’t moving, the city isn’t moving.’’

The army of office workers still working remotely means fewer cars flow into the city from the suburbs, which has helped lessen traffic in Manhattan. But traffic has slowed to a crawl on highways in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, according to INRIX, an analytics company.

The city’s most congested artery has become the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where since 2019 the average travel speed has dropped during the morning rush by 19 percent to 21.5 miles per hour.

Average traffic speeds have also fallen on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, the Long Island Expressway and Grand Central Parkway in Queens and on the Cross Bronx Expressway, where the average speed barely exceeds 15 m.p.h.

“Never, never, never in my life — not even during Christmastime before — have I ever seen traffic this bad,” said Dharminder Singh, 45, a Long Island construction worker whose round-trip commute time to job sites in Manhattan and the Bronx has doubled to three hours a day.

The return of traffic jams is not just a New York phenomenon. Though traffic volumes nationally remain below prepandemic levels, especially in urban downtown areas, cars are increasingly clogging roads in many cities, including Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas.

But no place is as bad as New York City, which topped a 2021 scorecard of the country’s most congested urban areas, with drivers losing an average of 102 hours annually to congestion, nearly three times the national average, according to INRIX.

The traffic-saturated streets have prompted New York City transportation officials to revive gridlock alert days , on which they warn people to avoid certain parts of the city and use public transit instead.

Several stops along a bus route in Lower Manhattan have been suspended at times because buses cannot get around traffic packed outside the Holland Tunnel. And pedestrian safety managers — a service provided by a local business district that was halted in March 2020 — were brought back to help people navigate a busy street near the tunnel.

During the pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose time in office ends on Friday, has encouraged people not to drive, and the city has added a significant number of bus and bike lanes. Mr. de Blasio’s successor, Eric Adams, an avid cyclist, has promised to build on those efforts.

Mr. Adams has also said he would manage traffic more efficiently by partnering with technology companies to monitor traffic patterns in real time, and he has called for rethinking truck deliveries, including shifting more rush-hour deliveries to off hours.

But those efforts will do little to address traffic already flooding into the city. At major crossings to New York from New Jersey — including the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels — vehicle traffic has reached 99 percent of prepandemic levels with 10.4 million vehicles in October, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The number of vehicles in the city will only intensify, transportation experts say, as office workers and tourists return in bigger numbers.

By 2023, 85,000 more cars a day than in 2019 could enter Manhattan’s central business district, according to an analysis by Samuel I. Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner.

Truck traffic is already swamping the roads with daily volumes exceeding 2019 levels, according to Mr. Schwartz.

“We’re in trouble,” Mr. Schwartz said. “We’re reaching a point where the highway system is overloaded.”

A key tool meant to help alleviate the city’s chronic traffic woes — a congestion pricing plan that would charge drivers entering Manhattan’s busiest sections — has been delayed until at least 2023. Mr. Adams supports congestion pricing.

In the meantime, the rise in traffic outside Manhattan is having a noticeable effect on some neighborhoods. Even as average weekday vehicle trips ending in the city have declined overall, a half-dozen neighborhoods had more vehicle trips in September and October than in the same period in 2019, according to StreetLight Data, an analytics company.

In St. Albans, Queens, vehicle trips rose 4.8 percent, followed by North Bushwick in Brooklyn at 4.6 percent and Bronxdale in the Bronx at 4.3 percent.

And more people are returning to using ride-hailing apps, especially outside Manhattan. The number of Uber rides in September in Manhattan reached 70 percent of September 2019 volume, but the percentage was higher in the other four boroughs.

The explosion of traffic has made it a challenge to get to work on time and trapped public buses at a moment when transit officials are trying to lure back more riders.

“It’s a hassle because you’re sitting on a bus, and it’s not going anywhere,” said John Beuther, 73, a retired plumber in the Bronx, who has been late to doctors’ appointments and meet-ups with his girlfriend.

Traffic jams have also created more headaches and expenses for businesses and community organizations. In the South Bronx, fresh produce and meats show up late at an Aldi grocery store. Across the street at Cuida Med pharmacy, customers have been kept waiting by late deliveries of prescription medications.

“You spend your time in a parking lot,” said Michael Brady, the executive director of the Third Avenue Business Improvement District in the South Bronx. “Unless you have extra time in your schedule, the traffic can really ruin your day.”

Workers for Encore, a nonprofit that delivers meals to older people, must haul empty carts and bags on the subway because there is so much traffic in northern Manhattan that delivery trucks cannot pick them up. The subway and overtime costs add up to more than $500 a week, said Judith Castillo, the group’s chief operating officer.

At a homeless shelter in the Rockaways in Queens, meals have arrived more than an hour late because a delivery van for City Beet Kitchens got stuck in traffic.

“The problem is we’re not the only ones going through this,” said Barbara Hughes, the executive director of City Beet.

The pandemic has also turned many New Yorkers into car owners as they have abandoned public transit because they’re afraid of the virus or crime.

“They’re voting with their steering wheels, and they’re opting to drive,” said Tom Grech, the president and chief executive of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, who has spent an hour and a half to drive just seven miles.

Total registrations in the city for passenger vehicles reached 2.2 million this year through Dec. 1, up from 1.9 million in all of 2019, according to state records.

Jonathan Eadie, 32, a parking attendant in Brooklyn, drives to work and elsewhere in the city after buying a Volkswagen sedan in July 2020 “for convenience and safety.”

Not even the traffic can send him back to the subway.

“I don’t shy away from it, but there are a lot of cars — it’s insane,” Mr. Eadie said.

Jermaine Pope, 42, who drives an RV that houses a mobile health clinic for Project Renewal, a nonprofit group, said he sees more people driving alone. “It’s completely changed,” he said. “It’s one person to a car.”

He has to start his day an hour earlier at 6:30 a.m. because the gridlock begins sooner and has spread from a couple of hot spots like the Cross Bronx Expressway to practically his entire trip to Manhattan and Brooklyn.

“I am definitely seeing massive changes in the traffic,” he said. “Prepandemic, we would avoid the Cross Bronx — that was the most congested. Now what we’re seeing is they’re all the same. It’s heavy, heavy dense traffic.”

Winnie Hu is a reporter on the Metro desk, focusing on transportation and infrastructure stories. She has also covered education, politics in City Hall and Albany, and the Bronx and upstate New York since joining The Times in 1999. More about Winnie Hu

Patrick McGeehan writes about transportation and infrastructure for the Metro section. He has been a reporter for The Times since 1999 and has covered Wall Street, executive pay, transportation, the New York City economy and New Jersey. More about Patrick McGeehan

Watch CBS News

Fire still burning after freight train derails on Arizona-New Mexico state line

Updated on: April 27, 2024 / 11:20 AM EDT / CBS/AP

A freight train carrying fuel derailed and caught fire Friday near the Arizona-New Mexico state line, forcing the closure of an interstate highway that serves as a key trucking route.

As of Saturday morning, the fire was still burning, a public information officer for the New Mexico State Police told CBS News. 

About 35 of the cars carrying "mixed freight" had derailed, officials said Saturday. Six of those cars contained propane. 

Initial passersby posted videos and photos on social media of crumpled train cars and billowing black smoke.

No injuries were reported in the midday train wreck near Lupton, Arizona. BNSF Railway spokesperson Lena Kent said company personnel were on site working to clear the wreckage. Kent said the cause of the derailment is under investigation.

Interstate 40 was closed by authorities in both directions in the area in the early afternoon, directing trucks and motorists off the freeway to alternate routes, New Mexico State Police and the Arizona Department of Public Safety announced.

Nearby residences and a truck stop were evacuated as a precaution as winds carried away thick smoke and local firefighting crews responded. The derailment also led Amtrak to cancel some passenger travel, including on the route between Los Angeles and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Air monitoring and fire suppression assessments are ongoing, officials said Saturday. 

Traffic on I-40 backed up for more than 10 miles, though detours were opened on two-lane roads and highways, said Kristine Bustos-Mihelcic, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The agency warned Friday evening of an extended highway closure that would increase traffic on other interstate highways, including I-25 and I-10.

The National Transportation Security Board said it was sending a team to investigate the incident. 

• Freight Train Derailment

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Approaches to Neighborhood Traffic Problems

Last Updated: November 20, 2021

Although neighborhood traffic concerns can run the gamut, this page will help you figure out how to tackle the big  six.  We identify as most typical these issues:

• Traffic jams at particular times of day, places, or event sites
• "Cut-through" traffic
• Intersection conflicts and dangers
• Conflicts between residential and commercial traffic in the neighborhood
• Conflicts among vehicles, pedestrians, bicycles, and now electric scooters, delivery robots, and the like

Let's take them one at a time.

Neighborhood Traffic Jams

First and foremost, write down when and where neighborhood traffic jams occur, and also the extent of the backup, meaning the number of vehicles that are waiting in each direction at one time. 

Your neighborhood volunteers can do this; there is no need to wait for police or public works officials to come out and observe just yet.  Keep good records of this and cover at least a week so that you can show if there is a pattern.  If you have a weekend problem and only minimal issues on weekdays, which may happen in some touristy areas, you may want to double or triple the amount of observations on weekends as compared to weekdays.

If you can--and we believe that most neighborhood groups would be able to do so--figure out what business, organization, event, or attraction is causing most of the problem.  If it is a particular church, restaurant, or museum that is clogging up your traffic, enlist them to help find a solution.  They should be motivated to do so, as their patrons too are frustrated if they must spend time circling around looking for a place to park or waiting to enter a parking facility.

If there are multiple sources of the traffic congestion, and you are in the happy situation of being a multi-destination popular neighborhood, then you have to engage in neighborhood problem-solving.  Do you need a parking facility, such as a lot or a garage?  If so, how can you afford one, and whose cooperation would you need? 

Even more importantly, are there ways to encourage public transportation, bicycling, or walking to and within your neighborhood?  If you have access to good public transportation, perhaps the business association can offer some incentives for the use of it.  You can encourage bicycle use simply by installing well-built bicycle racks and creating protected bicycle lanes if possible.  Look to see if there are ways to improve pedestrian access from other parts of the neighborhood or other neighborhoods, so that more people walk to your popular destinations on the nice days, when people tend to be out and about more anyway.

Take an honest look at whether part of the traffic problem involves poor directional signs showing people where to park or where popular attractions are located.  Those unfamiliar with your neighborhood will automatically slow down, ignore driveways, and make sudden turns if they don't know where they are going. 

If you have public parking, mark directions to it clearly and often.  If you have metered on-street parking, make sure you are not encouraging more turnover than necessary with your restrictive time limits on parking.  If people can only park in one location for two hours, with no renewals possible, you are encouraging those who come for lunch and a leisurely stroll to move their vehicles unnecessarily.

In some instances a traffic circle (also called a roundabout, mini-roundabout, and various other names) may help move traffic along faster.  This technique is especially appropriate for intersections of more than two streets, or where there is a high consistent volume of traffic from two or more directions. They take some space, however, so they are not appropriate where your town or city doesn't own much right-of-way. You would need expert help to advocate effectively for this technique.

Cut-Through Traffic Issues

Another common neighborhood traffic complaint concerns traffic that does not originate in or travel to the neighborhood, but instead uses your neighborhood streets as a shortcut.  Sometimes this happens because a congested major intersection at one corner of your neighborhood aggravates drivers, and they can take advantage of your local streets to reduce the total time of their trip. Or sometimes your local streets just are parallel to a congested major road and therefore an attractive alternative, or rear exits from parking lots dump out into your neighborhood.

Even more aggravating, sometimes this traffic wants to travel faster than your own local drivers, who may enjoy seeing what's new and who's doing what.  Those cut-through drivers just want to get somewhere faster.

The remedies for cut-through traffic are not self-evident, since the solutions also inconvenience neighborhood residents.  However, you can weigh the advantages and disadvantages of these:

• Prohibiting entrance into the neighborhood from a major street by creating a cul-de-sac dead end at the edge of your neighborhood
• Preventing right turns from your neighborhood onto a collector or arterial street (see our street hierarchy page if you need descriptions and definitions)
• Installing raised concrete or asphalt diverters at some point or points so that all neighborhood traffic has to turn a particular direction
• Installing permanent or makeshift semi-diverters, which are barriers that prohibit entrance to a particular street but allow exit from it
• Prohibiting all truck traffic, or all truck traffic other than local deliveries
• Prohibiting right or left turns into the neighborhood at certain high-traffic portions of the day, since often it is the people making the journey to or from work who are most tempted to cut through
• Prohibiting cut-through traffic by ordinance, which may have a deterrent value but may not be effective because it would require a police officer to sit and wait for violators

If you decide that cul de sacs or diverters are appropriate for you, try to make these into attractive landscape or streetscape features.

Speeding Vehicles as a Neighborhood Problem

Many times neighborhood traffic issues boil down to complaints about vehicles going too fast. If this is happening in your neighborhood, try these things in this order:

Check to see whether speed limit signs are posted at the edges of your neighborhood and appropriately throughout if you have a large neighborhood.  If not, ask your town or city for better signage.

Discuss the matter with your local police force.  If they say they are too busy to enforce your speed limit, no matter what it is, you have a different problem.  In that case you will want to either escalate your complaint to your city council, or start demanding physical controls on speeding. 

By "physical controls" we mean traffic calming devices, such as speed bumps, speed tables, chicanes (narrowing of the street or installation of barriers forcing a curved driving pattern that will slow traffic), narrowing the driving lanes themselves without necessarily narrowing the public right-of-way, installing landscape islands in the middle of the street that both narrow the street and give drivers something else to look at, or installing barriers at intersections that require drivers to go around them before curving back toward the ordinary driving lane. You also may have seen what we called semi-diverters above, which may be as simple as sawhorses to drive around, or to cut off drivers from entering a side street but still allow residents to exit.

Ask the complainers, and for that matter all members of your neighborhood association , to track where and at what time of day they notice what they consider to be speeding.

An important point also is to discuss and then experiment with whether you consider the legal speed limit to be appropriate. Ask a few neighborhood leaders who will command respect at your city or town hall to drive at the speed limit on a Sunday morning or very very early on any morning, to see whether that feels like a speed allowing a driver to stop quickly for a child or object in the street.

We liked a recent article from the Sightline Institute suggesting that 20 miles per hour may be more appropriate for residential neighborhoods than 25 miles per hour.

If you feel that you have installed all of the traffic calming devices that are practical in your situation, and you also feel that the speed limit is appropriate and posted frequently enough, in the end this is a matter of making enough of a clamor at city hall to get the enforcement you need. 

Videos may be an effective tool in getting your message across, and certainly emphasize children, the elderly, and the disabled in your still or moving photography to illustrate your point.  Better yet, if there is a particular time of the day or week when speeding is most likely to occur, get your city council members out there in person to see it. If you can borrow a speed gun from a local police department, having the council member time some of the cars can be very effective in getting action.

Dangerous Intersections at the Neighborhood Level

If you have an intersection that has a high accident rate, as documented by your police or public works department, or even if you just have an intersection that is subjectively experienced as stressful, you should engage in some problem-solving around this.  Candidates are intersections with poor visibility, unusual shapes (the traffic engineers will call it unusual "geometry"), or high-volume intersections where impatience may play a role in accidents and frustration.

Poor visibility may be due to topography, buildings coming out to the curbline on one or both sides, parked cars blocking the view, or trees or landscaping.   Overgrown landscaping may be the easiest to solve; if there is an ordinance (or a provision of the zoning ordinance) allowing for a sight triangle, neighborhood residents should demand that it be enforced.  If there is no such ordinance, your neighborhood association may need to lobby to have one enacted; such provisions are common in zoning ordinances.

Rows of parked cars that block the view also may be relatively easy to solve.  Usually this situation is caused by parking being allowed too close to the actual intersection.  Your town or city can easily regulate this, although occasionally there is an enforcement problem if people have been in the habit of parking in front of a school, day care center, or dry cleaner "for just a minute."

Building lines and topography present greater challenges.  To resolve these issues, you may have to resort to:

• A traffic control device, such as an all-ways stop sign or traffic signal
• Creation or encouragement of alternate routes based on parallel streets that would allow people to continue to their destinations with roughly the same ease and time.

Obviously measures to stop speeding and cut-through neighborhood traffic will be helpful as well.

Conflicts Between Residential and Commercial Interests in the Neighborhood

If you are in a residential neighborhood adjacent to a commercial center, strip, or downtown, you will have to live with the fact that shoppers, diners, and delivery trucks will have to access your general area.  The task is to keep those vehicles from inhibiting neighborhood traffic, peace and quiet, and privacy of the residential area.  A second major issue is to minimize parking impacts.

So to continue in our example, it is futile for residents and businesses to get into a shouting match about congestion, parking, noise, blocked driveways, and so forth.

What is far more productive is a problem-solving session or two, in which common sense rules for the commercial areas can be established.  Businesses banding together can stop employee parking in front of residences, encourage customer parking in appropriate locations, and sometimes figure out cooperative delivery zones for truck deliveries.

Involve your city government in this conversation because minor ordinance changes may become necessary to enforce whatever the decisions are.  A city staff member also may bring a wider perspective on possible remedies and a degree of professionalism.  Don't count on this in smaller towns, but in large cities it may be difficult to capture the attention of the traffic engineers too.  We didn't say that convening one or more productive work sessions would be easy.

Conflicts Among Cars, Trucks, Bicycles, and Pedestrians

Lastly, many neighborhood traffic issues stem from the give and take among various transportation modes.  While the traffic engineers tend to call all of these conflicts, in most instances, someone gives way with only a minor feeling of frustration. Nonetheless, it's important for the neighborhood to try to equalize the safety and opportunity for all kinds of movement.

Take every opportunity possible to raise awareness that all modes of transportation are welcome to use your streets.  You might start a normal public awareness campaign, or you might rely on traffic signs or more creative or even whimsical signs to point out all types of transportation are welcome. 

Bicycling or walking advocacy groups may be helpful to your neighborhood in this regard, as they have experience explaining their needs.  For instance, drivers may be unaware of the dangers to bicyclists of opening their parked car doors into the oncoming bicycle.  Involve these types of organizations if they are present in your broader community.

An emerging type of conflict is and will be how to handle various delivery robots, which might be called ground drones by some, as well as aerial drones used to deliver packages for the last 100 feet or more. The delivery bot companies seem to think they have every right to run their cute little delivery robots on a public sidewalk at the expense of freaking out pedestrians of every age who are accustomed to a relatively safe sidewalk. As these are deployed in neighborhoods near you, form a coalition with other neighborhoods or implore your city government to help with sorting out the protocol for delivery bots.

While you are working on this, you also may want to discuss aerial drones that are about to be used, or already are being used, in your neighborhoods. Ponder how your community can assure that pedestrian safety is paramount. After all, isn't human health and safety more important than more stuff? The aerial drones need to be confined to designated flyways in our opinion. Yes, it's true that you in your neighborhood may have very limited control over this technology, but that is why you need to band together with other neighborhoods. 

Note that all types of drone delivery have the potential for decreasing objectionable truck and delivery van traffic on your local streets. However, make sure you aren't simply substituting one headache for another.

The Important Role of Resident Help on Neighborhood-Level Traffic Issues

At the neighborhood level, residents and those who travel the streets often, including postal workers and school bus drivers, can be very helpful in pointing out issues and sometimes in discovering the solutions.  Cities really should consider adding a section on on-going traffic topics to whatever online and offline citizen complaint or reporting mechanisms they have in place.  

In sum, resolution of neighborhood traffic issues requires a good deal of problem-solving and good will on all sides.  Sometimes you will have to experiment with solutions until you have the right blend, but if you persist, you will be pleased with the result.  Occasionally you will need to look at neighborhood streets comprehensively, and always should take that approach when you prepare a new  neighborhood plan.

More often than not, the neighborhood is pretty much on its own in terms of documenting the problem before taking it to the city staff. We do advise that you approach staff members before you start complaining loudly to your elected officials, because the paid employees ultimately will have to implement your solutions. You will need their good will. Only if the staff is uncooperative should you seek to escalate your issues into the political arena.

For a more comprehensive overview of these topics, you might have a look at this  Institute of Traffic Engineers article on neighborhood traffic .

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