Week Around The Ists
H-Town Rock
Not surprisingly, Houston traffic has gotten better over the past year - almost 16% better, according to the 2008 National Traffic Scorecard released today by transportation research firm Inrix. Notwithstanding this improvement, Houston climbed from seventh to sixth in the list of most congested cities in America. Forbes, which usually loves to pick on Houston in its interminable series of rankings, gave the Bayou City a pass this time. But they rolled out the red carpet for Minneapolis, which rose three spots to make its debut in the top ten. Well met, old friend! Of course, Minneapolis had a major interstate closed for several months after the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi, while Houston cut the ribbon on a vastly expanded Katy Freeway. But let's not quibble over details.
Measuring traffic congestion on a citywide basis is tricky, and surprisingly controversial. The Texas Transportation Institute, based at Texas A&M, has published its well-hyped Urban Mobility Report since 1982, but many transportation experts consider the TTI to be in thrall to TxDOT and their shared belief in the curative powers of freeways. Privately held Inrix surely has its own agenda, but at first blush its methodology seems sound - they measure congestion throughout the day, and aggregate billions of data points from nearly 800,000 anonymous, GPS-equipped vehicles.
What's most interesting (if not confounding) about the Scorecard is that while Houston is the sixth most congested city in the United States, it doesn't have a single entry in the 100 worst intersections in America. You have to go to number 270 to find the worst intersection in Houston: I-45 North and Scott Street. Meanwhile Austin, the 21st most congested city in America, has four intersections in the top 100. Apparently Houston traffic is like a chronic case of the sniffles—constant and annoying, but generally low-grade.
Forbes has put together a nifty Google map of all the bottlenecks, but it takes a little navigating to get to Houston.
Photo courtesy of flickr user bill barfield
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I gotta tell ya, traffic lately has been light years better than it used to be. I attribute a lot of that to the expansion of the Katy Freeway, which I hated before and during construction. But now that they're done with it, I have to grudingly admit that they did a bang-up job.
That is, of course, the point of expanding a freeway. But given the Katy area's current growth rate, it's just a matter of time before the Katy Freeway gets congested again. Especially if (when?) the economy picks up. And what then? At some point, TxDOT needs a new game plan.
That's exactly why I wasn't a fan of the expansion to begin with. It really bothered me that we had existing rail lines running parallel to the Katy Freeway all the way into town, but that they were going to be torn up in favor of more pavement. A light rail line there would have been fantastic. I was so disappointed.
You're right that we need to look beyond traditional vehicular transportation and more into public transit. I also wish that they'd institute some kind of moratorium on homebuilding out in Katy (and Sugar Land and Spring and Cypress...etc) and force people to use the existing housing and infrastructure that we have. It's entirely out of control right now. But that's a pipe dream at best... :D