Loop 610 No. 1 on list of congested freeways

The pandemic might be lingering, but relief from Loop 610 traffic certainly is not, allowing the segment from Interstate 10 to Interstate 69 through Uptown to regain the top spot as Texas’ most-congested corridor.

With an average delay of 919,437 hours per mile, the West Loop far exceeded its constant competitor for the top spot, Interstate 35 through Austin, which averaged 639,389 hours of delay per mile — a drop that indicates Austin’s worst segment is still enjoying some pandemic relief even if drivers might feel otherwise.

“When you look at some of those commute corridors, you had a whole lot less commuters,” said David Schrank, senior research scientist at Texas A&M Transportation Institute, and a principal author of the annual most-congested list.

Three of the top five and 10 of the top 20 most congested segments are in the Houston area, which typically dominates the list. Houston also claims spot No. 100, Texas 249 between Interstate 45 and the Sam Houston Tollway.

Loop 610 through Uptown had the top spot on the most-congested list from 2016 to 2019. The segment has been in the top two since the Texas Department of Transportation began compiling the list, as construction at U.S. 290 worsened congestion along the segment for years. Now crews are in the fourth year of rebuilding the loop interchange with I-69 near the Galleria, not expected to finish until 2024.

Traffic along the route is likely to get even worse in the coming months, as TxDOT plans for reyear moving the existing lanes along Loop 610 spanning I-69, so the new bridges can be built in their place.

If there is a silver lining to all that wasted time, Schrank said it is that the congestion nosedive from the COVID pandemic means some trips are still far below 2019-era numbers. Others, especially along high-volume truck routes, are already at or above their pre-COVID levels.

Schrank said the pandemic has been a lesson for researchers, but also upended some of their predictions.

“This is kind of an interesting from a pointed hat geeky research way,” he said. “We got to see the undoing of congestion that had built up for 30 years, but what we also saw was how quickly it started coming back.”

As a result, Schrank predicted many places will be clamoring for congestion relief, but certainly rethinking how quickly and exactly where those improvements should be made.

“We can’t sit back and think the future is going to be everybody works from home,” he said.