Is traffic congestion back to pre-COVID levels? That depends on where you live.
American commuters spent 54 hours stuck in traffic in 2022, matching exactly their experience from 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a brief but sharp decline in daily travel delay, according to a new study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
Researchers say we have yet to learn what the pandemic’s long-term effects may be on urban transportation overall, but they note how some travel patterns have changed in those recent years. For instance, Mondays and Fridays now carry a smaller share of weekly traffic than they did pre-COVID. And truck traffic volumes have continued to grow, fueled by a steady increase in at-home delivery of goods and services, and passenger vehicle traffic has rebounded.
“Taken as a whole across the country, the numbers would indicate that we’re back to pre-pandemic conditions,” says David Schrank, a TTI senior research scientist and primary author of the UMR. “But for any given city, maybe not.”
The study, sponsored by the Texas Department of Transportation, illustrates over 40 years how roadway congestion has become a persistent problem in American cities, especially those with healthy economies and consistent growth. Several factors suggest that gridlock will continue to worsen in most urban areas:
- Truck-related congestion is up everywhere, indicating a sustained growth in e-commerce and consumer preferences for home delivery of a wide range of goods. The nation is still adjusting to supply chain problems that created shortages and higher prices that were exacerbated by the pandemic.
- 2022 traffic data illustrate a period of transition, in which there is more traffic mid-day, mid-week and on weekends, compared to pre-pandemic conditions. Thursday traffic is now rivalling Friday’s, which was previously the heaviest of the week by far. Saturday congestion is growing and nearly matching Monday levels, which have steadily declined from 2019 to 2022.
- The “evening rush hour” is returning to our daily experience, unlike the pandemic years, when congestion was spread more evenly throughout the day. The morning peak traffic time is still shorter and smaller in general than what we knew before COVID, and we still have a little more congestion in the middle of the day than we did pre-pandemic.
Researchers emphasize that solving the congestion dilemma will require multiple strategies that include such treatments as signal timing, clearing traffic incidents more quickly, and managing travel demand through hybrid work schedules, in addition to building or expanding roadways.
In addition to the familiar collection of solutions to roadway congestion, Schrank notes that researchers are beginning to focus on the thought patterns of the people who create it.
“A lot of what we’re doing now is trying to get to the question of why,” he says. “Why are people traveling and how can we affect that travel – whether it’s through a mode shift or a time shift or encouraging a telework hybrid day? Is there a more efficient way to handle it? We actually can look at some of those things now and data is getting better for us to do those kinds of things every day.”
For more information, please visit the Urban Mobility Report website.