If traffic continues to grow at the current pace, over the next couple of decades drivers in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Portland, San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle-Tacoma, and Washington, D.C. will be sitting in daily traffic jams worse than the infamous traffic jams that plague Los Angeles eight hours a day.
As a result, commutes will take almost twice as long and you’ll have to leave even earlier to allow for traffic jams if you have to arrive someplace at a specific time, producing a further reduction to our national productivity.
Traffic jams rob the U.S. economy of $78 billion/year in productivity.
Traffic jams idle away almost three billion gallons of gas and accounts for 26 million extra tons of greenhouse gases.
Every 1% reduction in vehicles yields a three-fold decrease in congestion.