Marking a rare breather from almost constant traffic growth over the last quarter-century, congestion has eased up ever so slightly in the Chicago region, at first because of rising fuel prices, and more recently because of the recession.
But the road to economic recovery is paved with speed bumps, according to a report issued Wednesday by congestion researchers, who predict longer commutes as the recession recedes.
In a long-running study conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute, the Chicago area and northwest Indiana retained the distinction in 2007 of posting the second-worst ranking in the nation for how much longer each individual trip takes during most times of the day due to traffic tie-ups.
Only the Los Angeles region had lousier results.
Also, the price for congestion in the Chicago region, factoring in wasted time and fuel, totals about $4.2 billion a year, the study said. It translates to more than 129 million gallons of excess fuel consumed a year, or about 28 gallons wasted by each driver in the Chicago region.
The bright spot, supposing there is one? In 2007, the latest year studied, drivers here averaged a whopping 18 seconds less time each day battling traffic.
What are you going to do with all that extra leisure time? Take up needlework or perhaps study a foreign language?
Kathryn Kawczynski hasn’t noticed any change in her commute. The drive from her Rogers Park home to her job in Elk Grove Village takes a solid hour one way. She’d swap shoes with a train or bus rider any day, she said. “I would love to take public transportation, but there’s not really any way to do that,” said Kawczynski, 23. “I would have to take two trains and a bus, then magically walk about 5 miles to work.”
Drivers can bank on the fact that roadway bottlenecks will return with a vengeance once the economy improves, according to this year’s update of the congestion study that has been conducted for 25 years by the transportation institute, affiliated with Texas A&M University.
“We’ve seen in many recessions over time that every time when the economy picks up again, congestion growth returns,” said David Schrank, an associate research scientist at the institute who co-wrote the study.
As well as analyzing 2007 data on traffic congestion, the researchers looked at more recent trends. Their conclusion: When fuel prices began to slack off after hitting their highest points in 2007 and last year, the number of vehicle miles traveled started to inch up in some areas. But then the economy went into recession and total miles driven ebbed, probably linked to increasing unemployment.
Yet the general state of congestion year after year is so severe in most urban areas that the recent reduction in gridlock can be viewed more as a statistical blip rather than as anything that would permit commuters who drive to sleep later in the morning or get home more consistently in time for dinner, the study indicates.
“The vast majority of commuters who are driving in the most-congested hours of the day probably haven’t noticed much difference in travel time,” Schrank said.
Despite a decrease in vehicles miles traveled annually in the U.S., drivers in northeastern Illinois and neighboring areas of Indiana spent 41 extra hours behind the steering wheel in 2007 as a result of badly clogged highways and major streets, the study found. That’s a slight improvement from 43 hours of delay in 2006, but it’s still the equivalent of spending a full workweek stuck in traffic.
The two-hour annual delay reduction, when spread out over all 365 days of the year, comes out to a savings of about 18 seconds a day.
With congestion expected to come roaring back as the economy improves, the fallout will be the worst in regions of the country that have failed to invest in mass transit and roadway improvements, the study concluded.
The Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace need about $10 billion in new capital funding over the next five years to get their systems to a state of good repair, the Regional Transportation Authority said.
“Cities should be using this period of slow congestion growth to fix problems before the economy recovers,” Schrank said. “History has shown that congestion will pick up again, and we will be back where we were.”
The expansive mass-transit network in the Chicago region contributes to about $1.1 billion worth of delay savings annually, ranking No.2 in savings behind the New York City region, the study found. Put another way, it means public transit reduces delays by almost 49 million hours annually in the Chicago region.
Harsh Parikh learned about Chicago’s horrific traffic the hard way. The 22-year-old intern at Feeding America, a non-profit group fighting hunger, has been driving downtown to work from the western suburbs five days a week this summer. Public transportation, here he comes. “I’m going to stop driving,” said Parikh, who lives in Naperville. “It takes me an hour and a half in the morning [to get to work], so I’d better take the Metra.”
Despite the Chicago-area mass-transit network providing more than 1.9 million rides each weekday, the greater Chicago area still ranked No.2 nationwide, behind the Los Angeles area, for the worst travel-time penalty due to delays on each individual trip.
“It takes 43 percent longer for someone in the Chicago area to travel in a commute-type situation versus how long it would take in the middle of the night,” Schrank said.
It ends up tacking an extra nine minutes onto what would be a 20-minute drive in free-flowing traffic, he said. Stack up the problem state by state and congestion ends up causing Americans to travel 4.2 billion hours more each year and to buy an extra 2.8 billion gallons of fuel, for a congestion penalty totaling $87.2 billion, the study said.
What are the best solutions to reduce congestion? More of everything, the Texas researchers said.
Their recommendations include:
* Improving traffic-signal timings to boost vehicle flow.
*Removing vehicles involved in crashes rapidly.
*Adding capacity, not only on highways, but also on rail lines and other key corridors.
*Increasing opportunities for employees to work flexible hours outside the major rush periods or to work from home.
*Encouraging communities to build transit-oriented developments where housing, jobs and stores are within range of pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders.
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How’s your commute?
Park and ride
Patrick John has an unusual way of getting to and from work. He drives from his home around 83rd Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway to one of several neighborhoods also on the South Side, where he can snag a parking spot on the street for free. Then he hops on an “L” train, gets downtown and takes a bus to his job in the West Loop. That’s a big commute, but it saves money and time that could be spent behind the wheel in traffic, said John, 40. “It’s not a big secret,” he said. “It’s crowded in the area where the free spots are.”
Dream or nightmare
Brian Siok, 39, easily spends two to three hours in his car each day. “Sometimes [Interstate Highway] 290 is a dream to drive. Other days, you don’t know what to expect,” said Siok, a union glazier who works in Hillside but lives in Chicago’s South Loop. “Traffic is not any better.”
Parking deterrent
Heather Tullio, 28, a lawyer, drives to work in Chicago two days a week. Tullio is noticing changes in her commute — “It seems like there’s less people on the road” — perhaps because of layoffs. Or maybe people just don’t want to pay $30 a day at a parking garage, she said.
Roads less traveled
Barbara Williams, 51, who commutes to Maywood from her home in Hillside each day, said she hasn’t dared take a highway to work for years. “It’s too crowded,” Williams said. “Holidays and weekends, that would be the only time I’d take the expressway.”
No more Blue Line
Kimberly Busch, 29, used to be an avid Blue Line rider. But then she got a new job and ditched her CTA pass for a car, part of the job requirement since Busch works downtown, in Waukegan and on the South Side during the workweek. She doesn’t miss the train, even if it means sharing Chicago’s congested roads. Busch, who lives near the city’s Bucktown neighborhood, isn’t worried about a surge in highway traffic when the recession eases. “It seems to me people are pretty set in their ways,” she said.
Early to rise
To beat the masses downtown, Tim Healy tries to leave his Winnetka home around 6 a.m. when he drives 45 minutes to work two or three days a week. If you don’t know anything about [Chicago traffic], you’re kind of in bad shape,” Healy said.
45-minute ‘flight’
Matt O’Neill, 19, commutes from Lake Forest to Oak Brook for a summer internship at Ronald McDonald House Charities. He says he can tell traffic is lighter. “When I first started, my uncle definitely told me to leave an hour and a half early, so flying here in 45 minutes was definitely surprising,” he said.
Walking distance
Work is stressful enough for Richard Jones, president of Metropolitan Family Services, he says. Why make it worse by sitting in traffic all day? That’s why he moved to 9th and State Streets in Chicago 11 years ago so he could walk to work — less than a mile away. Now he uses a car only to attend church and buy groceries. Said Jones, whose work is headquartered at 1 N. Dearborn St.: “I didn’t want to add to the stress. To me driving in back-to-back, bumper-to-bumper traffic is highly stressful, and dangerous.”
— Kristen Schorsch and Vikki Ortiz
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jhilkevitch@tribune.com
