Phoenix ranked in top 20 for traffic congestion nationally
Aug 30, 2015, 3:50 PM
This one can be filed under “duh” for anyone who has ever hit the road in the Valley during rush hour.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute and INRIX recently released their 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard and the Phoenix metropolitan area was among the 20 most congested areas in the categories of hours delayed, travel time index, extra gas consumed and congestion cost.
The Valley was ranked 17th for hours delayed yearly at 51, 19th for travel time index at 1.27, 11th in excess fuel consumed per driver at 25 gallons and 13th in extra cost per commuter with $1,201.
The data was compiled for the 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard with hundreds of speed data points on close to every mile of major road in urban America for almost every 15-minute period of the average day of the week.
Washington DC was the most congested in every category except travel time index, which was topped by Los Angeles.
Nationally in 2014, Americans had to travel an extra 6.9 billion hours due to heavy traffic and purchase an extra 3.1 billion gallons of fuel costing $160 billion.