Transportation infrastructure: new study says U.S. traffic congestion still on a rough road
Jeff Berman, Senior Editor -- Logistics Management, 9/18/2007
WASHINGTON—It may not come as a major surprise, but it remains true that there is a major congestion problem in the United States. A new report released today by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI)—entitled the 2007 Urban Mobility Report—confirms that congestion is getting worse in urban areas throughout the country.
Some of the figures disclosed in the report, which focus on the time and resources Americans are devoting to their daily commutes appear to be incongruous on the surface, but are actually reality: congestion in 2005 caused 4.2 billion hours of travel delay that subsequently resulted in an additional 2.9 billion gallons of fuel consumption with vehicles stuck in traffic;wasted fuel and wasted time translated into a total congestion cost of $78.2 billion in 2005, which was $5.1 billion more than 2004’s tally; and congestion caused the average peak period traveler to spend an extra 38 hours of travel time and consume an additional 38 gallons of fuel, coming out to $710 per traveler, said the report.
Data for the report was based on the effects of congestion of all 437 urban areas of the U.S.—along with detailed information for 85 specific urban areas—and is based on 2005 figures, which is the most recent year for which complete data is available.
While much of the data compiled in this report is based on daily commuters going back and forth to work, the impact of over the road transportation for shippers relying on trucks moving goods through their supply chains from source to store is not something that can be dismissed or overlooked when looking at this data, according to House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Spokesperson Jim Berard.
“We tend to look at things in terms of commuting, because that is something everyone can relate to personally, said Berard in an interview with Logistics Management earlier today. “But the costs of congestion incurred by moving goods and commodities through urban areas [by shippers and carriers] in terms of fuel consumption, additional labor costs and in an economy that depends heavily on just in time deliveries delays, become even more costly. We don’t have the luxury of time that we used to have.”
Berard added that when shippers transport perishable goods that are impacted by congestion, costs typically spike because of transportation delays. And this significantly adds to the costs of the goods purchased by consumers.
“It is not just the extra gas that the driver is paying of the lost time at home or the lost productivity at work,” noted Berard. “It is also the additional costs of the goods we are buying, because it costs more to deliver them because of rising [congestion-related] expenses.”
The Causes of Congestion:
Making things worse on the national congestion front, according to the TTI report, is that there are various factors negatively compounding the current state of congestion. Chief among them are: trips taking longer; congestion affecting more of the day; and the fact that trip travel times have become more unreliable, among others.
On the other side, the report points out certain action items that, if used collaboratively, may make things better on the roads. Some of these concepts include: getting as much service as possible from existing infrastructure, adding road and transit system capacity in key corridors, relieving chokepoints, and keeping expectations realistic.
Other options noted in the report that may eventually make a difference in reducing the amount of congestion currently being experienced are adding more high-occupancy toll lanes and container fee pricing at ports.
The report explained that the proliferation of toll lanes “appear to be a way that the concept of value or congestion pricing will be implemented in many regions,” adding that offering a high-speed and reliable trip in exchange for a price may significantly benefit both freight shippers and travelers. And at the ports, the report cited how that at the Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach and Oakland a system has been implemented in which container fees are reduced for overnight loading and unloading and then raised during peak hours. By doing this, the report mentioned that the higher fees are used to pay for overtime pay rates and overnight operating charges, and one-third of all containers at these ports have made the move to using off-peak hours in less than two years.
"There is no 'magic' technology or solution on the horizon because there is no single cause of congestion," said study co-author Tim Lomax, a research engineer at TTI, in a statement. "The good news is that there are multiple strategies involving traffic operations and public transit available right now that if applied together, can lessen this problem."
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