LexFather

1. Washington, D.C.

2. Atlanta <----- I use to hate it when people would say "Wow your from L.A. , traffic is really bad out there"

3. Los Angeles

4. San Francisco

5. Houston

http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/10/con...?partner=msnre

Despite support, most notably from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City's congestion pricing plan stalled in early April when the state Senate refused to assemble a vote on it. Had it gone forward, and passed, the plan would have charged drivers $8 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street during peak traffic hours.

Failed public-policy initiatives like this are just one element contributing to gridlock nationwide. In other cities, overbuilding has lengthened commute times and delays. In Washington, D.C., for example, the country's most congested city by our measures, sprawl has compounded already existing traffic problems.

To determine the rest, we took the 75 largest metro areas and calculated which logged the longest commuting times and the longest delays.

The Texas Transportation Institute, a research division of Texas A&M University that measures congestion by how long the average traveler is delayed on his route to and from work during peak commuting hours, provided data on delays. But congestion is more than hitting red lights and merging onto highways with nicknames such as the MacArthur Maze in the Bay Area, or the Mixing Bowl in the D.C. metro, where traffic routinely comes to a screeching halt and the only thing accelerating is driver stress levels.

For this reason, we combined data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey -- which measures commuter travel time by car, bus and subway -- to see what percent of each metro's commuters spend 45 minutes or more getting to work.

Torturous travels
By these measures, we found that commuters in Chicago spend far less time stuck in traffic than commuters in Los Angeles (46 hours a year compared with 72), but that 25% of Chicago workers spend 45 minutes or more commuting, compared with 19% for those in Los Angeles.

This is true of many Western and Sunbelt cities when examined next to their East Coast and Midwest counterparts. While Houstonians spend 56 hours a year stuck in traffic, according to the TTI, only 20% spend more than 45 minutes getting to work. New Yorkers get stuck in traffic 46 hours a year, but 43% spend 45 minutes or more commuting.

The reason is simple, says Alan Pisarski, a consultant to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Older cities such as New York or Chicago, which had million-plus populations in the 19th century, feature dense areas where industry and commerce are clustered, creating lengthy commutes for people living in the outlying suburbs. In the suburbs of cities that boomed in the automotive age, such as Los Angeles, Houston and Atlanta, office parks dot the landscape. In those places, it's fairly common for people to commute from one suburb to another, from say Pasadena, Calif., to office buildings in Glendale, a 15-minute drive on what can be a slow-moving freeway. Not so on Long Island, N.Y. The majority of people living in Port Washington, on Long Island's North Shore, commute to Manhattan, a 35- to 45-minute train ride away.

Systems like the Long Island Railroad are possible options for many of the country's congested cities. But installing them can be costly. Dallas is spending $900 million through 2018 for extensions of its DART rail system into northern Texas.

This is a good strategy, says Robert Puentes, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. He suggests that new commercial centers will develop along the train's line. Shorter commutes will follow.

Others say that such solutions are most viable in cities with densely packed population and business centers. Without them, trains cannot connect people to their jobs.

"Transit works really well when you have a lot of people going from somewhere to somewhere and where you can get a lot of people walking to transit," says Tim Lomax, a researcher at the TTI. "But you have to recognize where transit works well and where it doesn't. The decision about how much and where to add capacity should come from where the jobs are, how many there are and how dense they are."

CK6Speed

iTrader: (1)

45 minutes or more commuting in traffic? That is nothing. More than 50% of our Island spends between 1-2 hours each way commuting. I would say about 3-4 hours a day in traffic both ways. The problem is with these studies is they always omit Hawaii because we are not a large city, we only have 1.2 million people in the state, but traffic is probably one of the worse in the nation due to lack of space and roadways. There is just no place to add more roads. Anyone that lives on the west side of the Island and on the other side of the mountain will take over an hour to get into town to work. The east side of the Island is between 45-1 hour normally. It would be great of we could reduce our commute time down to around 45 minutes one way.

ffpowerLN

iTrader: (1)

I just moved to LA from Atlanta, personally I don't think Atlanta's traffic is worse than LA's.

STIG

Study is flawed, obviously.

PhilipMSPT

iTrader: (5)

"Most Congested" does not equal "the longest commuting times and the longest delays," which is what they measured...

Lexmex

DC is bad, I was used to seeing the back up on the Key Bridge from Virginia to DC.

mmarshall

I've told you guys for a long time that traffic here was among the country's worst. SoCal probably has the largest number of cars and the most actual traffic, but the freeway system is correspondingly large, and it goes everywhere. Here in the DC area, the limited number of freeways, and the fact that, unlike most other cities, none of the freeways actually go completely through the city without stopping (thanks to local residents who fought them), means you've got a real mess. Combine that with a limited subway system that doesn't serve a lot of areas, millions of tourists that flock to the area from all over the country and the world each spring and summer, enormous suburban sprawl that is almost as bad as Los Angeles, the highest suburban growth in the country (much if it recently from illegal immigration), and you've got a formula for gridlock. The VA state government also doesn't allow local governments to control growth in the suburbs; that is true to a lesser extent in the MD suburbs.

Yes, in terms of being a frustrating place to drive, the DC area is the country's worst...but I got used to it long ago. I learned paitience.

Hey, but the good side is that in this area you've got dealerships and new cars EVERYWHERE....that's one reason why it is not hard for me to do reviews.

plex

iTrader: (11)

DC area is definately bad especially if you have to deal with the Northern VA area.

mmarshall

There are places close by in MD just as bad.....especially the notorious Beltway stretch from Cabin John past I-270 and Rock Creek Park to I-95. The approach to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge is also a mess in both states.

Stage3

iTrader: (3)

Atlanta's is pretty bad... I've personally witnessed all 16 lanes at a dead stop during rush hour. It sucks something fierce...

mmarshall

It is interesting that New York City is not in the top five. Many people there do not own or drive cars, take cabs, and the subway goes everywhere (of course, the huge number of taxis cause some congestion). They also don't have as much suburban sprawl there as in DC-MD-VA.

mmarshall

All that takes is one accident and some rubberneckers. That can happen anywhere.

Kamikaze2b

My city (Eugene) was ranked the 2nd best! Our roads are in horrible condition though.