Terrible traffic? Blame the improving economy.

(Image credit: iStock)

last updated 27 August 2015

One upside to economic downturns is that traffic congestion falls off: With less economic activity, people do less driving to work, to the store, and to everywhere else. The flip-side is that when economies recover — as America is doing now, however modestly — traffic makes a comeback. And in this case, to multi-decade highs, according to a new study by Texas A&M University and the data analysis firm Inrix:

[The study] found traffic congestion was worse in 2014 than in any year since at least 1982. American commuters spent 42 hours each on average in traffic last year and wasted a total of 3.1 billion gallons of fuel, costing the economy $160 billion. [The Wall Street Journal]

The recent drop in oil prices didn't show up in the study, because the effects of fuel prices take awhile to filter into congestion data. Furthermore, David Ellis, a research scientist at Texas A&M, said that a lot of commuting — to work, taking kids to school, etc — is for fixed needs that stay constant regardless of the price of fuel. There's also a well-researched tendency in which more highway construction leads to more traffic congestion, not less.