Car Congestion

Austin is notoriously known for its terrible rush hour traffic.  Statistics show that a rush hour trip, on a national level it would take 25% longer than in a normal time, however, in Austin, it would take 29% longer.

This percentage of time wasted leads to more expensive resources being wasted as well.  In the Austin area, the work force lost 22.8 million hours and wasted 15.6 million gallons of fuel.  This is at a time where traffic congestion is actually decreasing due to the economy and gas prices.

Many believe that the government should spend a significant amount of money on decreasing such wastefulness by improving the road and transit transportation and increasing technology to allow emergency officials to respond and clear the roadways quicker.  Other ways to continue to decrease congestion is by adding more outlying roads, such as toll roads.

Austin has recently opened 70 miles of toll roads and hopefully will continue to take steps in decreasing traffic congestion in order to reduce wasting valuable resources.