The national decrease of much new road and freeway building over the past several years is showing up in the increase in commuting time.
Stuck in traffic? Join the crowd
Commuters waste 38 hours a year
By Tony Bizjak - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Feel like you're wasting more of your life stuck in traffic? New research says it's true.
America's urban commuters -- Sacramentans included -- waste an entire workweek each year stuck in traffic, a new study says.
Time delayed in traffic nationwide nudged up to a record average of 38 hours in 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by Texas A&M University's Texas Traffic Institute.
Sacramento commuters spent 41 hours stymied on the highways. That's up an hour from the previous year, and added up to 30 wasted gallons of gas per Sacramento commuter that year.
"It used to take five minutes to get to the freeway, and now it takes me as much as 20 minutes!" lamented Kat Krist, a Los Angeles transplant who lives in fast-growing North Natomas, where Interstate 5 and local surface streets are overmatched.
"It crept up on us," Krist said. "Now I am having to find that window of time so I don't hit the worst traffic. This is L.A. thinking. I see it turning into an L.A."
While traffic is getting worse here, we aren't yet Los Angeles. There, road warriors wasted a nationwide-worst 72 hours, according to the study.
