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JEAN HELLERTampa's Malfunction Junction, where I-4 and I-275 meet, ranks as the 16th worst traffic bottleneck in America.
TAMPA - As fame goes, it probably will be fleeting.
And that's a good thing.
Tampa's infamous Malfunction Junction, the confluence of Interstates 4 and 275, has been designated the 16th worst traffic bottleneck in the nation, behind such notably traffic-clogged cities as Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix and Washington, D.C.
The report by Cambridge Systematics Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., was commissioned by the American Highway Users Alliance, a Washington-based lobbying group that advocates for increased highway spending.
When the same bottleneck study was done in 1999, Malfunction Junction wasn't bad enough to make the cut. When the study is updated in 2009, the interchange probably won't make it again because the nearly $80-million upgrade of the interchange is scheduled to be completed in 2006.
In the meantime, the Cambridge study concludes that Tampa Bay drivers deserve national recognition for spending nearly 14.4-million hours a year waiting behind the wheel at Malfunction Junction.
"I've always been hesitant about talking about time wasted in traffic," said Phil Winters of the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research. "Given cell phones and the fact that people can conduct business while they're stuck in traffic, or they can listen to books on tape, I don't really consider all that time wasted."
The purpose of the study is to advance the agenda of the Highway Users Alliance, which is pressing Congress to pass a larger highway-mass transit bill than President Bush wants.
Bush has proposed $256-billion over six years, but the Senate has passed a $318-billion bill, and the House will soon consider a $375-billion proposal. The current six-year highway spending bill will expire at the end of this month.
Last year, Congress chose not to take up a six-year highway bill and passed a stop-gap spending measure, which expired Oct. 1 and was extended with a continuing resolution that provided the same amount of spending as the year before. Congress could pass another one-year measure.
But that's unlikely to affect the improvements to Malfunction Junction because most of those costs have been funded.
For anyone planning to visit Los Angeles soon, the worst bottleneck in the country, according to the Alliance, can be found on the Ventura Freeway at Interstate 405. Motorists there spend more than 27-million hours a year stuck in traffic.
The 24 worst highway bottlenecks, followed by the number of vehicles handled daily and annual hours of delay, according to a study by American Highway Users Alliance: