Nationwide Study Shows Cost and Need
for Public Transit
Marylanders commuting to the Washington D.C.
area wasted more than 127 million hours of additional time on the roads, and over
90 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 $2.3
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 $456 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.
“Population has increased, households own more cars, and
drivers travel further each year. Traffic congestion won’t slow down until
those trends change,” said Johanna Neumann, Policy Advocate for Maryland PIRG.
“State lawmakers need to focus on getting more cars off the road, particularly
through enhanced rail and bus transportation.”
Neumann added that, “each full bus can get fifty cars off
the road. Drivers across Maryland
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 Mid-Atlantic’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, Maryland tried to fight traffic congestion by
building new roads,” said Neumann. “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.”
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