Transportation

Traffic Congestion

Traffic Congestion

Traffic congestion is a headache for commuters and it has a negative impact on the delivery of goods and services. The commute times in the Hampton Roads region are close to the national average, but congestion is most serious when traffic is forced into bottlenecks at bridges and tunnels.

Why is This Important?

A transportation infrastructure is valuable to an economy because it facilitates the mobility of goods and services, but congestion increases the cost of mobility to everyone and reduces the efficiency and condition of the roadways. The ability to move goods and people around the region at relatively low cost contributes directly to the well-being of citizens, and also reduces the total cost of the goods and services they receive. These lower costs result in savings to consumers and higher profits for businesses.

How is Hampton Roads Doing?

The national average commute time is 25 minutes. Locally, the U.S. Census measured the average commute time for 27 of Virginia's larger counties and cities, with the range from a low of 17 minutes in Lynchburg to a high of 41 minutes in Prince William County in 2008. Cities in the Hampton Roads region tended toward average commutes of 21 to 24 minutes, though Suffolk City had an average commute time of almost 27 minutes in 2008.

Average Commute Time to Work, By City (in Minutes)

	2006	2007	2008
Hampton	22	22.9	22.9
Virginia Beach	22.2	23	22.5
Newport News	22.3	21.1	21.5
Portsmouth	22.4	22.9	24.0
Norfolk	22.7	20.4	22.0
Chesapeake	23.7	23.6	24.3
Suffolk	28.6	26.9	26.8

Relative to peer Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC MSA (Hampton Roads MSA) had the second lowest commuting time at 23.6. The Savannah, GA MSA had the lowest commute times at just over 22 minutes.

Hampton Roads has a commute time on par with other MSAs in the state. Although its commute time is nearly 27 percent longer than the Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford MSA (the leading Virginia MSA) which has an average commute time of 18.5 minutes, it is substantially lower than the commute times of the Washington DC (33 minutes) and the Winchester (28 minutes) metro areas.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has calculated average daily vehicle-miles per capita for certain urban areas in the United States as a measure of congestion. The average daily vehicle-miles per capita is 23.8 in Virginia Beach, VA, which is above the statewide average of 22.6 but below the average for urban areas in Virginia of 25 vehicle-miles per capita.

What Influences Traffic Congestion?

Road usage, as measured by vehicle miles traveled (VMT), has increased significantly over the past few decades as rising incomes have led to increased car ownership, increased desire for lower density living arrangements, new road capacity and a long-term trend toward lower real costs of personal transportation. In the last two decades, increases have occurred in the number of road miles that experience congestion, the frequency of serious congestion incidents, and the number of localities that experience chronic congestion, especially during prime commuting hours. In the Hampton Roads region, congestion is most serious where traffic is forced into bottlenecks at bridges and tunnels. In addition to increases in VMT and the commensurate increases in congestion, the cost of congestion has risen in terms of lost wages, productivity, and the increased cost of freight transport.

A combination of factors contributes to congestion, including the capacity of the roadway, the time structure of demand for using the roadway, the cost of using the road, and the condition of the road. However, highway congestion is not just a problem of recurring "rush hour" delay in major cities. More than half of all congestion is non-recurring -- caused by crashes, disabled vehicles, adverse weather, work zones, special events and other temporary disruptions to the highway transportation system.