Who says traffic in Jacksonville is not a problem?

[thelakelander]

First Coast traffic: Worse than average

Every year, Jacksonville drivers spend 39 hours stuck in traffic. By contrast, Orlando drivers suffer the most in Florida - 54 hours a year.

By TIMOTHY J. GIBBONS,
The Times-Union

About to head out on your morning commute?

Well, as you're stuck in traffic, start adding up the minutes: Over the course of a year, according to a highly anticipated study released Tuesday, Jacksonville drivers will spend 39 hours stuck in traffic.

That put First Coast congestion a bit above the national average of 38 hours a year, according to the study by the Texas Transportation Institute of 2005 data, the most recent available. Jacksonville was ranked 29th, tied with bigger areas like Las Vegas and San Antonio.

And Jacksonville is seeing much faster growth in the length of delays than the national average, the study said: Just to maintain a constant level of congestion as the population grows, Jacksonville would need to add 65 miles of lanes to its highways.

The rising level of congestion in cities like Jacksonville surprised the study's authors, who looked at 437 urban areas to see how things have changed since the last study, in 2005.

"We felt like congestion was going to be up," said Tim Lomax, research engineer at TTI and co-author of the study. "The fact that it was up in places like Jacksonville - in small and medium cities - is one of the surprises."

Across the nation, urban Americans spent an additional 4.2 billion hours on the road, purchasing an extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel, the study said. That was an increase of 220 million hours, 140 million gallons and $5 billion from 2004.

That includes 20.8 million hours Jacksonville drivers spent delayed, burning about 14 million more gallons of gas than needed.

Jacksonville placed in the middle of the pack in Florida, with Orlando - the eighth most congested city in the nation - ranked the worst in the state. Orlando had 54 hours of delay per traveler per year, followed by Miami with 50 hours and Tampa with 45.

The Los Angeles area had the worst showing in the survey, with travelers being delayed 72 hours a year and wasting 57 gallons of fuel. San Francisco, Washington and Atlanta tied for second place.

timothy.gibbons@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4103

See also: Read the full report See also: See local traffic coveragecms_sidebox()

This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/091907/met_200796548.shtml.

[Ocklawaha]

Anyone who was at the BRT meeting with JTA will recall the planner snapping at the Metro-Jacksonville team and friends, "Jacksonville DOESN'T have traffic!" It was one of the more incredible things said at the meeting and demonstrated just how removed from reality our "Transportation Authority" has become. The statement really bothered me, for some time I wondered where the JTA finds these people. Then driving down the Interstate I looked at the big digital display sign and there was the answer... "JTB and I-95 CONGESTION 10 minute delays." So JTA was right after all, we don't have traffic, we just call it congestion and the traffic problem will just fade away.

JTA? Time to pull your heads out... again!

Ocklawaha

[gatorback]

Fast forward 20 years....with the aged population Jacksonville wont even have congestion as the old farts wont drive and the young kids would have had enough of sense to move away...

[big ben]

i think traffic will improve slightly if they ever finish construction projects at key places, like 95 & 10 or butler & 9a.  eventually, the spreading suburbanism will cause more traffic delays.  i think the best way to lower traffic is to build a good mass transit system that people will actually try, while also improving road designs. 

sometimes i wonder what would happen to a city if, instead of building more highway lanes, they left them alone, or even took away lanes.  my first thoughts are that people would be much more likely to live downtown and it would help a city's downtown thrive.  now that i think about it more, i think it would be more likely that the majoriy of young of adults would move downtown for their jobs, but the majority of older adults would stick to their suburbs and change jobs to not drive as far.  then, there would be companies downtown (generally run by more experienced, aka older, people), that would move their offices from downtown to a suburb, or even another city.  i don't know why, but i felt like throwing that out there.

[tufsu1]

since you referenced the TTI study, lets take a closer look at some cities

Los Angeles - 72 hours delay
Washington D.C., San Fran, and Atlanta - 60 hours
Orlando - 54 hours
Miami - 50 hours
Tampa Bay - 45 hours

and Jacksonville....38 hours

not to say we don't have traffic congestion, but its all relative....and we are still in better shape than the other major metros in FL....and they are all growing faster!

[Jason]

^ Exactly.  I would much rather travel through Jax during rush-hour than just about any other major city in the country.

That being said, we still need to get ahead of the curve with mass transit because traffic is only getting worse and land is becomming more scarce.

[thelakelander]

To assume we're doing a better job because one metro has 72 hours delay to our 38 is faulty as well.  Before we compare apples to apples on congestion hours, lets dig a little closer.

metro - 2006 population - current growth rate 2000 to 2006

Los Angeles - 12,950,129 - 4.7%

Washington DC - 5,290,400 - 10.3%

Atlanta - 5,138,223 - 21%

San Francisco - 4,180,027 - 1.4%

Orlando - 1,984,855 - 20.7%

Miami - 5,463,857 - 9.1%

Tampa - 2,697,731 - 12.6%

Jacksonville - 1,277,997 - 13.8%

http://www.census.gov/population/www/estimates/metro_general/2006/CBSA-EST2006-01.csv

Now we see that just about every city mentioned above (excluding Orlando) is more than three times the size of Jax.  If compared apples to apples a metro that's double the size of metro Jax should have double the amount of traffic congestion delays.  So Tampa (which is pretty close) should be somewhere near 76 hours of delay, if compared that way.

This tells me a few things.

1. Percentage wise, we are the second fastest growing metro in Florida over 1 million people.

2. Apples to apples, population wise, most are more than three times our size, yet they are no where close to having three times the amount of traffic congestion delay.

3. You can't pave your way out of traffic congestion.  LA, Atlanta and Houston are great examples of this.  That's why they've begun to work at creating alternative forms of transit.

4. Outside of Tampa and Orlando, the others all have efficient rail systems allowing residents to avoid highway congestion if they want to.  This means a large portion of their local populations don't have to deal with traffic congestion at all, if they chose to leave their SUVs in the garage.  Here we don't have that option and there's no viable plan to provide that option for the next 20 years.

5. We aren't in better shape. We'll actually in a tougher situation and the day we reach any of these place's size, we'll be in worse shape than they are today.

[thelakelander]

^ Exactly.  I would much rather travel through Jax during rush-hour than just about any other major city in the country.

I would rather drive through Sarasota or Lakeland, than Jacksonville, but that does not mean they are doing a better job of traffic control than Jax is.  Keep in mind that Jax is less than half the size of most of the places just mentioned in the last two posts.  Compared apples to apples, we're not on the same level.

Instead of mentioning Miami, Atlanta and San Francisco, a more accurate comparison would be Richmond, Memphis, Buffalo and Louisville.

That being said, we still need to get ahead of the curve with mass transit because traffic is only getting worse and land is becomming more scarce.

Yes, right now we're behind the curve, but our physical landscape and existing infrastructure will allow us to quickly get back on track with proper planning and investment strategies.

[Jason]

Good point on the apples to aples comparison Lake.  It puts things into perspective when stated that way.  Although, I still believe that Jax's highway system is a very effecient (moreso once 9A is complete) way to get around a region the size of Jax, off or on peak.

Things are getting worse every day though and like you said, without transit we won't have a choice but to sit in traffic.

[thelakelander]

The problem isn't the beltway or bypassing the city, its getting through it and accessing areas that don't involve freeways.  Most likely, this stems from a poorly laid out street network that forces traffic onto single congested corridors instead of diffusing it with a grid system offering alternative routes.

[gatorback]

Try driving thru Austin on I35 during rush hour.  Rememeber Katrina, the traffic jam, um, yeah, which is why ASA is bring us commuter train service to cut down on traffic. 

[thelakelander]

Personally, I doubt the new Austin train will relieve traffic congestion in that city.  Any reduction of cars will be quickly replaced by those going to new develops that force their residents/workers onto I-35 to get to Austin.  However, it will offer a viable alternative method to get cross town for those willing to use it. 

[thelakelander]

Here's the official list:

Travel Time Index
1 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 1.50
2 Chicago, IL-IN 1.47
3 San Francisco-Oakland, CA 1.41
4 San Diego, CA 1.40
5 New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT 1.39
6 Miami, FL 1.38
7 Washington, DC-MD-VA 1.37
8 Houston, TX 1.36
9 Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington, TX 1.35
9 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA 1.35
11 Atlanta, GA 1.34
11 San Jose, CA 1.35
13 Denver-Aurora, CO 1.33
14 Sacramento, CA 1.32
15 Phoenix, AZ 1.31
15 Austin, TX 1.31
17 Seattle, WA 1.30
17 Orlando, FL 1.30
18 Las Vegas, NV 1.30
21 Detroit, MI 1.29
21 Portland, OR-WA 1.29
23 Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 1.28
23 Tampa-St Petersburg, FL 1.28
25 Boston, MA-NH-RI 1.27
26 Minneapolis-St Paul, MN 1.26
27 Oxnard-Ventura, CA 1.24
28 San Antonio, TX 1.23
28 Charlotte, NC-SC 1.23
28 Louisville, KY-IN 1.23
28 Tucson, AZ 1.23


Average Annual Delays per Traveler
1 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 72 hrs
2 San Francisco-Oakland, CA 60 hrs
2 Washington, DC-MD-VA 60 hrs
2 Atlanta, GA 60 hrs
5 Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington, TX 58 hrs
6 San Diego, CA 57 hrs
7 Houston, TX 56 hrs
8 Detroit, MI 54 hrs
8 San Jose, CA 54 hrs
8 Orlando, FL 54 hrs
11 Miami, FL 50 hrs
11 Denver-Aurora, CO 50 hrs
13 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA 49 hrs
13 Austin, TX 49 hrs
15 Phoenix, AZ 48 hrs
16 Chicago, IL-IN 46 hrs
16 New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT 46 hrs
16 Boston, MA-NH-RI 46 hrs
19 Seattle, WA 45 hrs
20 Tampa-St Petersburg, FL 45 hrs
20 Charlotte, NC-SC 45 hrs
20 Louisville, KY 42 hrs
22 Baltimore, MD 44 hrs
23 Minneapolis-St Paul, MN 43 hrs
23 Indianapolis, IN 43 hrs
25 Tucson, AZ 42 hrs
27 Sacramento, CA 41 hrs
28 Nashville-Davidson, TN 40 hrs
29 Las Vegas, NV 39 hrs
29 San Antonio, TX 39 hrs
29 Oxnard-Ventura, CA 39 hrs
29 Jacksonville, FL 39 hrs
33 Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 38 hrs
33 Portland, OR-WA 38 hrs

Wasted Fuel per Traveler
1 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 57 gallons
2 San Francisco-Oakland, CA 47 gallons
3 San Diego, CA 44 gallons
3 Atlanta, GA 44 gallons
5 Washington, DC-MD-VA 43 gallons
6 Houston, TX 42 gallons
7 Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington, TX 40 gallons
7 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA 40 gallons
9 San Jose, CA 38 gallons
10 Detroit, MI 35 gallons
10 Miami, FL 35 gallons
10 Orlando, FL 35 gallons

Jax, along with Louisville are the only two metropolitan areas on this list with no solid rail plan for avoiding future traffic congestion.