I-95 In Fredericksburg Worst Traffic In U.S. Says Study

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — This will come as no surprise to anyone who has experienced the seemingly never-ending congestion on Interstate 95 in the Fredericksburg area en route to Northern Virginia, but a global analytics company has come out with a study that labels that stretch the worst "traffic hotspot" in the United States.

Not only that, but INRIX Roadway Analytics has Washington DC's 6,097 hotspots the third-highest in the nation, behind only Los Angeles (10,385) and New York City (13,608) in terms of impacting one's wallet largely through wasted fuel.

To make it through the Fredericksburg hotspot during congestion is 33 minutes for a 6.47-mile stretch. In March and April, the study's sample, there were 1,394 traffic jams. Supposedly, according to the findings, such congestion could come at a cost of $2.3 billion over the next 10 years. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts. Also, like us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Here's a breakdown of how the study was conducted, per INRIX:

• A key feature of INRIX Roadway Analytics is the bottleneck tool, which pinpoints traffic jams on the road network. The locations where traffic jams occur, defined as observed speeds dropping below 65% of reference (uncongested) speed for at least 2 minutes, are called traffic hotspots.
• The bottleneck tool calculates the average length of all traffic jams at a hotspot, the average duration they existed and the number of occurrences at the hotspot during the study period. Multiplying these three statistics together produces the ‘Impact Factor’ – a measure of the scale or impact of each hotspot. This Impact Factor is used to rank traffic hotspots.
• The annual amount of time wasted at each traffic hotspot is estimated by assuming: the average traffic hotspot had two lanes of traffic; a vehicle density of 150 vehicles per mile; and vehicle occupancies based on national statistics. Multiplying these numbers by a hotspot’s Impact Factor produces an estimate of the amount of time wasted at each hotspot. An annual cost of this time can be made by multiplying the time wasted by six (the study covered two months) and converted into economic values by multiplying it by the value of time derived depending upon trip purpose from USDOT statistics. These costs are assumed to accrue for 10 years but future costs are discounted by the social discount rate of seven percent per year, set by U.S. Treasury Department, because flows that we pay or receive in the future are worth less to us in today’s money.

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