Garland drivers have the third worst commute in the United States, according to a recent report.
The report from the financial services website SmartAsset analyzed data from the 100 largest American cities. It used six metrics relating to commute time and cost to rank the daily commutes of each city.
The six metrics used to determine these results were the percentage of workers who commute, the average travel time to work, the percent of income spent on transportation, the percent of workers with commutes longer than one hour, how the average travel time has changed over the past five years, and how the percentage of workers with commutes longer than one hour has changed over the past five years.
Garland ranked behind only Stockton and Bakersfield, California, which took first and second place, respectively.
“The majority of workers in Garland, Texas, are commuters (86.1%),” wrote Anja Solum, a personal finance expert at SmartAsset. “And they average the seventh-highest commute time (roughly 30 minutes).”
“About 9.1% of commuters, however, experience drives over one hour (12th-highest),” continued Solum. “Overall, the average commute time has increased by 2.37% between 2016 and 2021.”
Another Texas city, El Paso, joined Garland in the top 10, ranking in seventh place. Dallas and Houston tied for 23rd place.
The average commute time in Dallas was found to be 25.7 minutes, and the commute time was found to have decreased by 3.8% over the past five years.
In Dallas, 5.8% of workers have a commute longer than one hour, and the average cost of transportation was found to be 9% of an individual’s income.
Arlington ranked No.33, with an average commute time of 26.1 minutes, which has decreased by 4.4% over the past five years.
Transportation costs likewise take up 9% of Arlington residents’ income, and 5.4% of workers in Arlington have a commute longer than one hour.
A complete ranking of all 100 cities, along with more information on the SmartAsset study, can be found here.
The Dallas Express asked the City of Garland if anything is being done to alleviate the severity of this problem.
Dave Timbrell, transportation operations administrator for the City of Garland, told The Dallas Express that the City is “consistently” working “to improve traffic flow through street-widening projects, surface repair, intersection bottleneck improvements, traffic signal retiming projects” and “transit options offered by DART.”
“Though it is not clear from the study, we expect that the nearly $2 billion currently being spent to reconstruct [Interstate] 635 is a contributor to longer delays presently,” he continued. “But it will ultimately provide very needed capacity improvements to this major freeway which will lead to less delay for commuters upon completion.”