BIKE: Austin congestion is now decreasing!

[Roger Baker]

Can that be true?

Probably, according to the prestigious Texas Transportation Institute,  
although the decrease is only from 50 hours of yearly delay down to  
about 49 hours.

Then why isn't everyone talking about this?

Because this fact is not useful for alarming the public by the special  
interests that favor roads, plus the fact does not fit in with the  
accepted media-promoted image of a city drowning in ever-increasing  
traffic.

Can this fact be documented?

Yes, go to the recently released 2004 TTI mobility report at:

http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/congestion_data/ 
national_congestion_tables.stm

then download the Table #4 PDF file, and look at the smaller cities on  
page two which notes a drop in average Austin travel delay from  
2001-2002 by one hour.

The truth is that this reduction is not large, but it looks like it may  
indicate a longer trend stemming from the end of the high tech boom  
that could extend to 2004, if we had the numbers.

The important factors to keep in mind are that Austin is a somewhat  
normal city in terms of its congestion. Where we stand out as a bad  
example is in our sprawling land use policy that makes per capita daily  
travel the fourth worst in the world! (we drive about 32 miles a day on  
average).

If you compare Austin in congestion-related delays to larger cities, we  
aren't so bad. Where we are especially bad is in the time spent in our  
cars due to how far we drive. In fact, 50 hours per year of congestion  
delay is only about eight minutes a day.  Thus, if we had only had in  
place a land use policy that put us closer together, (as Envision  
Central Texas indicates the public now wants), we could have easily  
reduced our total daily travel time over the last decade.

The resolution of this problem (in terms of public perception) must be  
one that takes into account the political influence of the road, real  
estate, and automobile interests, combined with the political power of  
TxDOT.  -- Roger