Drivers lose $1,200 yearly to traffic jams in the US- Study

Drivers lose $1,200 yearly to traffic jams in the US- Study

Monday, February 20, 2017 8:40 am


U.S President Donald Trump

Traffic jams cost U.S.

drivers an average of 1,200 dollars a year in wasted fuel

and time, and much more in Los Angeles, the city

with the world’s biggest rush hour traffic delays,

according to a study by INRIX Inc released on

Monday.

INRIX, based in Kirkland, Washington, aggregates

and analyses traffic data collected from vehicles

and highway infrastructure.

The company said the

latest edition of its Global Traffic Scorecard report

was based on 500 terabytes of data from 300

million sources.

While Thailand was the world’s most congested

country in 2016, according to the study, the United

States had the worst traffic among rich, developed

economies.

Five of the world’s 10 most

congested cities are in the United States, INRIX

found.

U.S. traffic congestion is not a new problem, but

it could get renewed attention if President Donald

Trump pushes for a large-scale infrastructure

investment programme as he has promised.

Chronic traffic jams are a concern for global

automakers, and some major cities have begun to

limit private motor vehicle access to central city

areas.

The INRIX study sliced data in different ways. Los

Angeles drivers spent an average of 104 peak

drive-time hours fighting slow traffic during 2016.

That put Los Angeles at the top of the list of cities

where drivers spent the most hours stuck in slow

rush hour traffic.

However, on a different measure, time stuck in

congestion as a share of all driving, Moscow

drivers had it worse.

They spent 25.2 per cent of

their total driving hours on congested roads, while

Los Angeles motorists spent 12.7 per cent of their

total driving time in slow traffic, the study found.

In Bogota, Colombia, motorists spend 31.8

per cent of their total driving time in traffic jams.

The worst stretch of road in the United States is

New York City’s Cross Bronx Expressway, where

drivers on the 4.7 mile (7.5 km) road spent an

average of 86 hours a year staring at the bumper

of the car ahead.

After Los Angeles, INRIX listed New York, San

Francisco, Atlanta and Miami as the most traffic-
choked U.S. cities.

(Reuters/NAN)


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