Tag: travel time

Commuting Times on the Rise

If it feels as if your commute to work is taking longer, it probably is. The Census Bureau reports the average drive time continues to increase. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

If it feels as if your commute to work is taking longer, it probably is. The Census Bureau reports
the average drive time continues to increase. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


According to the Census Bureau, most of the longest commutes are on the east and west coasts.
But the second longest average travel time to work – clocking in at nearly 33 minutes – is
Chicago. And travel times are getting longer, mostly because of urban sprawl. Workers are
moving farther away, and in some cases corporations are moving from downtowns into the
suburbs. Phillip Salopek is with the U.S. Census Bureau.


“Average travel time has been increasing. There was an increase in average travel time between
1980 and 1990. There was a more significant increase in travel times between 1990 and 2000.”


The Census Bureau also found some of the cities with the longest commute times tend to have a
higher rate of workers who have turned to public transportation, with New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia topping the list.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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Traffic Jams Waste Billions of Gallons of Fuel

Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Drivers are spending more time and burning more fuel stuck in traffic. An annual study found the
upward trend of more traffic congestion continues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:


The latest report looks at 2001. It found that about half of the time we spend in traffic jams is due
to delays caused by accidents, vehicle breakdowns, weather and construction. But researchers at
the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A and M University found that people are driving
farther to work and they’re also making more trips. Instead of combining trips to the bank, the
grocery store and the cleaners, more and more drivers tend to make separate trips, putting more
cars on the road at a time. David Schrank is one of the researchers. He says it ends up being a
huge waste of fuel.


“In 2001, almost five-point-seven billion gallons of fuel — that’s with a ‘b’– were wasted in
traffic congestion in 75 urban areas in the United States.”


And the study estimates we all spent more time, three-and-a-half billion hours, stuck in traffic
during the year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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