You Won't Believe How Many Hours You Sat in Traffic Last Year

Los Angeles is the nation’s second-most gridlock- plagued city, with 80 hours of delay per commuter for the year, according an annual traffic scorecard released today.

Washington was the nation’s most congested city, according to the 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard, with 82 hours of delay per commuter.

San Francisco was third, with 78 hours of delay per commuter, followed by New York (74 hours) and San Jose (67).

Americans drove more than 3 trillion miles in the last 12 months, a record, surpassing the previous record set in 2007, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation

The study produced by the data technology company INRIX and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, also found the average travel delay per commuter nationwide is more than twice what it was in 1982.

“Our growing traffic problem is too massive for any one entity to handle,” said Tim Lomax, a report co-author and Regents fellow at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

“Businesses can give their employees more flexibility in where, when and how they work, individual workers can adjust their commuting patterns and we can have better thinking when it comes to long-term land use planning.

“This problem calls for a classic ‘all hands on deck’ approach.”

--City News Service