3 days Ago
HOUSTON — Very few people are able to avoid Houston traffic as driving is critical for so many of you. In fact, one-third of the state’s top 100 most congested roads are in the Houston area. TxDOT and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute have recently released a study showing delay times have lowered for the area despite having so many roads backed up with thousands of drivers.
Rush hour in Houston has a tendency to look and sound the same. “There's usually no end for ideas to, to handle transportation,” Texas A&M Transportation Institute Senior Research Scientist David Schrank said. Ask any Houston driver and they definitely have ideas on what they want to see done.
“I want to see them really put their minds to it and come up with something to open this up a little bit better,” Jack Minr said. Minr is referring to the West Loop by the Galleria. The lights during any rush hour tell the story of bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“It’s going to take me almost two hours to get home and just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense,” Minr said. The highway is ranked as Texas’ most congested road for the third year in a row .
“Why is the West Loop #1? Well, you've got, it's the connection between two freeway corridors that are two of the busiest corridors really in North America. What hopefully what we can do is make number 1 become number 7 or something like that over time,” Schrank said. Houston, Katy and Galveston combine for 33 of the top 100 most congested roads in the state.
In the latest study just released it shows delays decreased for Houston drivers by nearly 10 percent from 2022 to 2023. This saved drivers $426 million. “We are in as a whole, moving traffic more efficiently than we did a decade ago,” Schrank said.
He adds their continued fight to make traffic be as efficient as possible depends on how they keep up with the city expanding. “Development happened. It increases traffic.
Houston has been growing just like most of Texas, and it's going to continue to grow,” Schrank said. Statewide traffic delays have lowered seven percent in the past five years. When comparing 2023 to 2022 the former saw a more than 20% increase in both traffic delays and congestion cost.
Traffic delays for 2023 totaled 505,721,564 hours. Congestion cost for 2023 totaled $13,443,018,416. RELATED: 'Highway to hell' | New task force targets deadly crashes on Highway 99.
