How much you’ll spend sitting in traffic this year
Oct 14, 2014, 3:20 PM | Updated: 3:48 pm
You already know you’re wasting time and money stuck in traffic. A new analysis puts a dollar figure on traffic delays.
Call it a congestion tax.
“Right now, it costs the average American about $1,700 annually, this tax if you will, which is sort of an all-inclusive vacation for five days to Mexico for a family of two, according to my wife,” said Kevin Foreman, GM of GeoAnalytics at INRIX, the Kirkland firm specializing in transportation analysis.
The report was created by INRIX in conjunction with the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr). It concludes that the cost of traffic delays in the U.S. economy will rise from $124 billion in 2013 to $186 billion by 2030.
The expense of traffic delays includes, time, fuel, and the higher cost to do business.
The report recommends four key solutions including increased remote working, more public transportation, universal center carpool lanes, and increased use of traffic technology.
“What we’re trying to do, if you will, is put a personal traffic helicopter behind every vehicle on the road to give them personal, perfect information so we can just use the roadways we have more economically than we are doing today,” said Foreman.
The two most significant drivers to traffic congestion are economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product(GDP) and population growth, according to Foreman.
The analysis predicts that the number of vehicles on the road in the U.S. will increase from an estimated 200 million today to 281 million by 2030.
