It has happened to us all at one time or another. You are running late for work, an appointment, or just meeting a friend, and to make matters worse, you get stuck in a traffic jam.
Although traffic congestion may seem to take longer when you are in a rush, if you add up all the time you spend waiting for the car in front of you to move each year, you would be shocked at how much time you have actually wasted.
Here’s a question for you. How much time does the average driver spend in traffic jams per year? Is it one day? One week?
Try one month!
That’s right, according to INRIX’s national traffic statistics, those traveling in the nation’s worst traffic corridors spend 1/12 of their year sitting in their car behind slow moving or stopped traffic.
The report, released today and available at http://inrix.com/scorecard/, notes drastic changes in the amount of congestion in our nation’s metro areas and traffic corridors.
According to thetrucker.com, “drivers are experiencing an average 10 percent increase in travel times” and “if unemployment drops to 7 percent by 2012 as economists’ predict, 9 million more daily work trips will jam our nation’s road network.”
In looking at the nation’s top 100 metro areas, INRIX found 70 of them to obtain higher congestion levels than the previous years.
The graph below (provided by http://inrix.com/scorecard/) marks the Los Angeles area to have the highest congested area with New York ranking second.
2010 Top Congested Metros
| Rank | Metro Area |
Change* |
| 1. | Los Angeles | same |
| 2. | New York | same |
| 3. | Chicago | same |
| 4. | Washington D.C. | same |
| 5. | Dallas/Fort Worth | same |
| 6. | San Francisco | Up |
| 7. | Houston | Down |
| 8. | Boston | same |
| 9. | Philadelphia | Up |
| 10. | Seattle/Tacoma | Down |
For those of you who complain about Mondays, here’s a reassuring fact that may make you slightly fonder of the day. According to INRIX, Mondays are actually the best day of the week when it comes to traffic, with Thursday being the worse.
INRIX also examined the nation’s worst traffic corridors last year, finding that a typical driver traveling in these areas can “experience up to 80 hours of delay annually on the afternoon commute alone” (http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/2011/3/8/StudyDriversinbottlenecksspendmorethanamonthyearlyintraffic.aspx). New York’s I-95 SB ranks in the number one spot.
Not only are you wasting a month of your life sitting in traffic when traveling in these areas but put that with the new hours of service proposal (which is striving to reduce the number of driving time for truck drivers from 11 hours to 10 hours) combined with rising fuel prices and now you don’t only have time wasted, but money as well.
Just think, a few hours stuck in traffic can cause a driver’s allowed time to run out, a shipment to be late and therefore, all other shipments in that trailer to be late as well, possibly resulting in lost customers.
All the more reason to choose a carrier you can trust such as Road Scholar Transport. With satellite tracking, you can see exactly where your freight is at all times, so you know whether a driver is stuck in traffic and how far away they are, along with 24 hour expedited services to ensure that your freight is delivered on time. Visit http://www.roadscholar.com/additionalservices.php to learn more.
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