Real-Timing the 2010 Urban Mobility Report (UTCM 10-65-55)

The Texas Transportation Institute is a national leader in providing congestion and mobility information. The Urban Mobility Report (UMR) is the most widely quoted report on urban congestion and its associated costs in the nation. The report measures system delay, wasted fuel, and the annual cost of congestion in all U.S. urban areas. The data that are available to analyze transportation performance are evolving, however, and the UMR procedures need to adopt the new data sources to provide the best possible estimate of mobility conditions. Private sector companies advertising the availability of nationwide average speed data on many highways in the United States compete with the UMR for congestion coverage. Through this research, TTI has developed a partnership with one of the private-sector speed companies, INRIX. The TTI and INRIX databases were matched and used to re-compute the UMR statistics based on actual speed data for all days and all major urban roads. This research has improved the estimates of congestion and its costs, and has improved the timeliness of U.S. traffic congestion estimates.