Illinoisans
wasted nearly 203 million hours of additional time on the road, and 141
million gallons of additional gas as a result of traffic congestion in
2005. The additional wasted time and fuel cost the public an equivalent
of $3.9 billion, according to the federally sponsored Urban Mobility Report released today by the Texas Transportation Institute. The findings underscore the need for additional transit in the region.
The
report shows that traffic congestion would be significantly worse if
not for public transportation within the metro area, which prevented
$779 million in additional delays compared to what they would have been
if existing transit hadn’t taken large numbers of drivers off the
region’s roads.
“With the 3rd worst traffic in America, congestion in Chicago
isn’t going away on its own,” said Brian Imus, Director of Illinois
PIRG, a citizen advocacy organization. “State lawmakers need to focus
policy on getting more cars off the road, particularly through enhanced
rail and bus transportation.”
The
report comes as commuters face a growing transit funding shortfall that
threatens to worsen traffic even further if state lawmakers fail to
resolve the crisis.
“Clearly, public transit is too important to let deadlocked politics in Springfield harm commuters across northeastern Illinois,” continued Imus. “Commuters across the region are tired of dealing with growing traffic congestion while lawmakers in Springfield stall on a solution to transit funding, a proven way to reduce congestion.”
He added that, “each full bus can get fifty cars off the road. Drivers across Illinois should be calling for more and better public transportation, even if they’ll never use it.”
The
report calculates mobility and traffic congestion on freeways and major
streets in 85 cities and is the most authoritative source on the
Chicagoland’s traffic conditions.
Traffic
congestion worsened steadily since the report first began tracking
travel time in 1982. Travel times for commutes have increased in each
year of the study. In addition to the growing average length of
commuting trips, drivers must allocate additional time to avoid being
late because traffic problems are increasingly unpredictable.
“For
decades, we’ve tried to fight traffic congestion by building new
roads,” continued Imus. “This report is further evidence of the failure
of that strategy. Instead we need to expand bus and rail systems to
reduce the number of drivers on the road. Doing so will reduce our
nation’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels and address congestion
problems before they cripple our metro areas.
