The Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., areas held the top spots among U.S. cities most plagued by traffic congestion in 2007, while metro Denver came in as the 13th most-congested, according to the annual report of the Texas Transportation Institute.
The institute found that travelers across the country spent one hour less stuck in traffic in 2007 than the previous year and wasted one less gallon of gas — “a rare break in near-constant growth in traffic over 25 years.”
The TTI study uses the hours of delay that motorists face annually because of congestion as a key measure for ranking cities with the worst traffic.
Because of the volume of data TTI uses, there is a lag in coming up with the congestion ranking, and 2007 is the most recent year for which the information is available.
The average rush-hour commuter in metro Denver experienced 45 hours of delays, or extra commuting time, in 2007 because of congestion, the TTI report showed. In Los Angeles, the annual delay per traveler was 70 hours, and in Washington, D.C., it was 62 hours.
On another measure of congestion, TTI’s travel-time index, metro Denver ranked 14th among large and very large urban areas.
The index compares travel time during free-flow, off-peak periods with rush-hour travel times. Denver’s 1.31 travel-time index means that a typical 30 minute off-peak, free-flow trip would take a little more than 39 minutes during rush hour.
By comparison, L.A.’s top-ranked travel-time index of 1.49 means a 30 minute off-peak trip takes nearly 45 minutes at rush hour, TTI said.
The increase in fuel prices over the last half of 2007 helped reduce congestion for the year, the group said, and high fuel prices for much of last year helped contribute to a decline in traffic volume in 2008. But traffic volume picked up as gas prices dropped.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
