Analysis: Every trip in city takes longer, increasing lost time
David Hughes developed his own method of figuring out if traffic was getting worse when he started commuting again for work five days a week after the COVID-19 pandemic. He’d count how many cars were in front of him and behind him at two traffic lights along his route: Antoine at 43rd and Antoine at the U.S. 290 westbound frontage road.
“At first it was four or five,” Hughes said. “Then six or eight. All of a sudden, it was 16 or 20.”
He stopped counting infrequently late last year, sensing things were getting worse.
Now there’s even more data to show drivers like Hughes are spending even more time in traffic. A typical 6-mile trip last year in Houston took 12 minutes and 13 seconds, according to a new analysis by TomTom, which operates mapping and traffic software common in car navigation systems and builds a database of billions of trips globally. That’s a 19-second increase from 2022, indicating traffic at all times of day is leading to more lost time for travelers in Houston.
Among cities globally, Houston has the 312th-worst traffic and the 25th-worst in the U.S., though the area remains in the top 10 when it comes to worst peak rush hour commutes.
That traffic getting worse is a seemingly-endless refrain from local drivers.
“But it really is,” Hughes said as he got gas near U.S. 290 on Monday.
The findings mostly mirror other analyses of Houston traffic, which have found traffic congestion has come back and even increased from pre-pandemic levels along core corridors.
“What we notice is there are more people returning to how they used to move and commute,” said Andy Marchant, TomTom’s head of global marketing and resident traffic expert, for the annual release. “In the past year, people are tending to making those regular commutes more.”
Facing more traffic, Marchant said drivers will either start to spend more and more time traveling, or adjust their habits. No one solution can solely “solve” congestion, he said.
“It is giving people a reason not to drive in certain instances or on certain days,” Marchant said, adding that businesses can lead that change.
Based on the TomTom research, here’s a breakdown on what all those brake lights in front of you mean for commuting.
32:50
Using 6-mile commutes as the standard distance, TomTom clocked the time it takes to cover that for a peak morning and peak evening trip at 32 minutes and 50 seconds, round-trip. Remove all the traffic, however, and you shave 14 minutes and 44 seconds off.
Much of that traffic is concentrated in what TomTom calls the “city center,” the roughly 3-mile radius around downtown.
56:28
Add up all those nearly 15 minutes lost to traffic, and researchers calculated the amount of time Houston drivers and riders blow at 56 hours and 28 minutes annually. That is a more than four-hour increase — or one director’s cut of The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King — from 2022.
73
The number of trees needed to absorb the carbon of each Houston area driver. This is based on the average of 732 kilograms of CO2 emitted by each car or truck on the road.
Per driver, Houston is far from the worst polluter from mobile sources. The region doesn’t even crack the top 20 nationally, though two Texas cities do.
Austin comes in at eighth, with each driver spewing about 825 kilos annually as a result of peak period driving. El Paso ranked 20th nationwide at 758 kilos.
344th
Ranking the entire metro area drops Houston down the worldwide list to 344th at peak rush hour, based on 2023 travel times. Driving 6 miles in Houston, when looking at the entire area and not the crush of congestion at the core, on average takes nine minutes and 50 seconds. That’s a 10-second jump from 2022, but nothing like the jammed streets and freeways in the center.
While nothing is likely to ever make the downtown core freeflowing — whether that is a wider Interstate 45 or $7.5 billion in transit improvements — both are likely to contribute to it not getting any worse as more people move around.