A report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), suggested that DFW motorists spend over 127 million hours in delays, wasting 44 million gallons of fuel, and costing nearly $3.2 trillion.
Out of all Dallas roadways, Woodall Rodgers Freeway ranked no.2 among the most congested roads in the state of Texas and no.1 in the DFW.
Overall, traffic delays on Texas roads are growing, according to research done by TTI, but there is still less congestion than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study measures traffic delay per mile of travel by calculating how much longer it takes for motorists to travel on a gridlocked road as compared to how long they can make the same trip in uncongested conditions.
“Traffic congestion isn’t just a big-city problem, and that problem is almost sure to get worse as our population surges by almost 20 million in the next 25 years,” David Schrank, TTI’s lead researcher on the annual study, told NBC 5. “With that kind of growth, Texas needs to use every possible means to keep people and goods moving. We need to add capacity, operate the system efficiently, and give people options for how to travel.”
These strategies will require road building at a quick pace, researchers say. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has adopted plans such as the Texas Clear Lanes initiative to increase construction.
Since 2009, TTI has been conducting reviews and studies of the state’s most crowded street and highway segments each year. The analysis, which was funded by TxDOT, reported little change in rankings from reviews in 2020 to 2021.
Eight of the ten most overcrowded road sections have stayed in the top ten for the last three years, researchers say. These statistics emphasize that traffic will eventually return to its standard intensity as the state’s population grows and its economy stays strong.
TxDOT is currently working to address gridlock for Texas drivers statewide.
