(The Philadelphia Inquirer posted the following story by Jere Downs on its website on October 1.)
PHILADELPHIA — Next time you’re stuck in a sea of brake lights on City Avenue and a packed SEPTA bus rolls up alongside, give a nod and a smile to the riders.
Thanks to a study released yesterday, we now have an idea of just how much worse the region’s traffic would be if one million people did not hop on a bus or train every morning. The answer: Without mass transit, your commute would be about one-third longer overall.
As the foremost observers of gridlock since 1987, Texas A&M University experts this year expanded their annual report to gauge the traffic relief provided by trains, buses and trolleys, among other aids such as carpooling and the green Pennsylvania Department of Transportation tow trucks that roam in search of stalled cars.
The report, issued by the university’s Texas Transportation Institute, suggests states should aim more money at mass transit and other remedies such as ramp meters, which control the flow of cars onto highways, because traffic problems are not going away.
“Congestion is worsening, no doubt about that,” university engineer Tim Lomax said. “This year’s study reinforces our belief that the best solution is actually a combination of solutions.”
Solutions are needed because the amount of lost time and wasted gas continues to rise.
Nationwide, traffic jams used up 5.7 billion gallons of fuel, or enough to fill 570,000 gasoline tank trucks stretched from New York to Las Vegas and back.
Figured at about $19 an hour for both time and fuel, congestion costs our region $1.5 billion annually. If riders on SEPTA, PATCO, NJ Transit and Amtrak switched to automobiles, the cost to the region in lost time and fuel would have risen by $614 million more in 2001, the study noted.
“You can just imagine what a nightmare it would be without it,” SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said.
Referring to the agency’s $41 million budget deficit and the paucity of state financing, Maloney said: “This is a fact that is often overlooked not only by commuters but also by the elected leaders who have to vote for subsidies.”
Rush-hour travelers in the Philadelphia region spent 44 hours stuck in traffic in 2001 – up from 42 hours the year before – ranking it 26th among 75 metropolitan areas nationwide. In comparison, top-ranking Los Angelenos frittered away 90 hours in peak-hour traffic.
Researchers found that roads are growing more clogged during ever-lengthening rush periods. In 2001, for example, 67 percent of roads across the country were bogged down during the peak, compared with 33 percent nationwide in 1982.
In the Philadelphia region, rush-hour congestion was just below the national average. About 63 percent of our local road network was congested during peak travel times in 2001, compared with just 31 percent in 1982.
Analyzing data from the Federal Highway Administration, the U.S. Census, and other agencies for the report, the researchers defined congestion as travel slower than 60 m.p.h. on highways and less than 35 m.p.h. on major roads.
“Congestion is like death or taxes, you can’t escape it,” Texas A&M University spokesman Bernie Fette said. The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the American Public Transportation Association, and the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, among others.
Only retirement holds the promise of relief for Jim Duffy, a Collegeville educator whose eight-mile morning drive to King of Prussia drags as long as 45 minutes on Route 422.
“It is bumper-to-bumper every day. When I retire, I’ll be out of it,” said Duffy, 58. “It won’t be fixed by then.”
In this region, sprawl has flung many residents into low-density developments, a factor that helps put the Philadelphia area in the middle of 75 regions nationwide when it comes to congestion, said Scott Brady, a transportation planner for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
“Philadelphia has been the fastest decentralizing region in the U.S. for 30 years,” Brady said yesterday. “You have your troubled corridors, like I-76 and Route 42, but development in this region is not as dense as some places, like Los Angeles. On U.S. 130, for example, in New Jersey, there are six lanes of free flow even during rush hour.”
Even if there were space to expand, more pavement alone would cost at least twice what is spent on road expansion, the study concluded.
Rather, Texas A&M experts David Schrank and Lomax said “transit improvements, better traffic-signal operations, aggressive incident-management programs, adjusted work hours, telecommuting and a range of other efficiency options are absolutely vital components of an overall solution.”
Anne Canby, who recently departed as leader of the Delaware Department of Transportation to become the nation’s chief lobbyist for walkable communities, more bike trails, pedestrian byways and transit, welcomed the tone of the report’s recommendations.
“The one-size-fits-all approach of only adding highway capacity is a thing of the past,” said Canby, who leads the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a Washington-based coalition of more than 500 groups and businesses bent on broadening transportation policy.
The report, she added, “says we have to be smarter about our transportation investments.”