Study: Traffic is bad, and it's getting worse

LOS ANGELES - With a roundtrip commute that normally lasts four hours, Lina Martinez tries to make the best of her grueling journey.

The legal secretary studies business courses, listens to jazz, Christian and motivational tapes and looks for the bright side of spending hours in gridlock.

"You just do the positive thing," said Martinez, who spends three hours each day in a bus and another hour in a car, even though her home is only 37 miles from work. "In life you have to have some time to think."

If there's one thing Los Angeles commuters have, a new study says, it's time to think. And to scream. And to grip the wheel and stare disbelievingly into the maze of gridlock.

The average Los Angeles driver wasted 90 hours - nearly four days - in traffic in 2001, according to the annual report released Tuesday by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. Nationally, the average driver spent 51 hours in traffic - four hours more than five years ago.

After Los Angeles, the San Francisco-Oakland area was next at 68 hours, followed by Denver (64), Miami (63) and Chicago and Phoenix, which tied for fifth (61).

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area ranked 21st in the study, with an average of 49 hours spent in traffic.

The price tag was $69.5-billion in wasted time and gas, according to the study, which looked at 75 urban areas.

Tim Lomax, the study's co-author, said public transportation, traffic signals on freeway entrance ramps and other congestion-busting measures have kept a bad situation from getting even worse. For example, traffic signal coordination aimed at smoothing the flow of cars, trucks and buses saved commuters 16-million hours, the report said.

The study found some areas of the country where gridlock eased. The average delay dropped for commuters in San Antonio, Texas; Fresno, Calif.; and Pensacola.

But the report said more improvements are needed, including more roads, additional bus and car pool lanes, and adjusted work hours for commuters.

Consulting company Deloitte & Touche is among firms that allow employees to adjust their hours to avoid rush hour.

"Some people do come in late because they live far away and don't want to deal with traffic," said spokeswoman Suzanne Thompson.

In response to criticism about its earlier studies, the institute for the first time factored in improvements that cities are making, such as traffic light coordination and ramp metering, as well as the benefits of public transportation, Lomax said.

The researchers analyzed data from the Federal Highway Administration and information from various state and local agencies to come up with the rankings.

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