Traffic Costs Americans $121 Billion

If you add up how much time and fuel we spend sitting in traffic, it totals a whopping $121 billion a year—that’s about $818 each, according to a new report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

 

Regardless whether commuters are adapting to traffic congestion by planning for delays, the bottom-line outcome is the same: wasted time and wasted money.

 

According to the report, Americans allowed up to three times longer driving times as a result of traffic, and therefore spent an additional 5.5 billion hours sitting in their cars in 2011, the latest year for which data is available. The average American planned 60 minutes for a trip that would take 20 minutes without traffic. In the area with the worst commute in the country, Washington D.C., drivers needed almost 3 hours for a 30-minute trip. The city with the best commute was Pensacola, Fla., where drivers add only 9 minutes for a 30-minute trip.

 

Virginians are no strangers to Washington D.C. traffic. The cities rounding out the top 10 worst for traffic congestion and commute times are: Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, New York-Newark, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Seattle.



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