City has nothing to gripe about
Studies say the Ultimate Project hasn’t been a pain. Yeah, right.
A group of dignitaries grabbed shovels on Feb. 17, 2015, to break ground on the I-4 Ultimate Project. After the first pile of dirt settled, Gov. Rick Scott took the microphone.
“It’s exciting to break ground on the new I-4 project,” he said. “It’s going to add lanes, it’s going to speed up traffic, it’s going to improve safety, and despite what bogus studies will say, it’s going to trigger the biggest case of road rage in automotive history!”
OK, he didn’t really say that last part. But most Central Florida drivers would attest the project has been a bit of an inconvenience.
Their exact words would be “b - - - - - - -,” or something like that.
But as we near the Ultimate Project’s four-year anniversary (only two more to go, give or take a decade), some flabbergasting news has come out.
Orlando has nothing to gripe about.
If you believe a variety of studies, we don’t have the worst traffic in the world. We don’t even have the worst traffic in Florida.
Despite the Ultimate Project’s best efforts, that distinction still goes to Miami. So says INRIX, a transportation analytics firm that released its annual “Global Traffic Scorecard” this week.
The report ranks the world’s most traffic-congested cities. Miami came in 73rd, which was about 70 spots lower than most South Floridians would have expected.
Orlando is No. 127, right between Rotterdam and Halifax, neither of which is currently spending $2.32 billion to replace 140 bridges and reconfigure 15 major interchanges along a 21-mile stretch that was choking on traffic before Scott first picked
up a shovel.
INRIX said it used data from 300 million sources that covered 5 million miles of road. Rankings were based on how much time drivers spent in traffic during peak hours compared to the time they’d spend under normal conditions.
The average Orlando driver lost 74 hours to traffic congestion last year, which translated into $1,037 in lost productivity.
The worst traffic city in the world is Moscow, where the average driver spent 210 extra hours in gridlock. To which I-4 travelers might blurt, “This study is a pile of s- - -.”
It’d be hard to convince anyone who’s spent 54 minutes going from downtown to Maitland that Orlando isn’t a top-20 traffic nightmare these days. But INRIX isn’t alone in its smiley-face view of the Ultimate Project.
If you want some real shoveling, the personal finance website WalletHub ranked the 100 worst cities in America for driving. The rankings were based on four categories.
Detroit was the worst city. Miami came in 74th, though it was No. 1 in “hours spent in congestion.”
If you think that’s a little screwy, Orlando was ranked the third-best city for driving. And its “traffic and infrastructure” was ranked No. 3.
We’ll pause now to let you bang your head against the steering wheel.
Orlando had the thirdbest road infrastructure in America? Holy pothole, what would it be ranked if 21 miles of prime infrastructure hadn’t been hit by a construction tornado?
But if you think that study needs some major resurfacing, consider one by Teletrac Navman, a software company specializing in fleet and asset management. It compiled a list of America’s worst-maintained roads and ranked cities based on the percentage of “good” or “bad” roads.
San Francisco-Oakland had the worst roads, with 71 percent deemed “bad.” And guess what city was the best, with 65 percent of its roads considered “good”? Yep, we’re No. 1. To quote Bill Nelson, we demand a recount!
It’s not that we don’t take pride that our main thoroughfare looks like a scene from “Mad Max.” We just want the world to recognize our unique misery.
Four years down, two (supposedly) to go.
In the meantime, if you see anybody doing a traffic study on the side of the road, please resist the urge to run them over.