Valley not the worst for slow traffic

Stephen Curran

Monday, May 9, 2005 | 10:56 a.m.

For Las Vegas Valley drivers watching the minutes tick by stuck in slow-moving traffic, the standard consolation holds true: It could be worse.

Just ask commuters in Seattle, San Diego, Minneapolis or Baltimore.

According to the Texas Transportation Institute, which compiled numbers from 2003 for a study released today, traffic in Las Vegas has worsened at a rate slower than 17 other cities with populations between 1 million and 3 million people.

The study found motorists spent 30 extra hours a year in their vehicles due to traffic delays in the valley, which is less than the average for similarly sized areas. Commuters in San Jose, San Diego, Orlando, Denver, Baltimore and the Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., area spend more than 50 extra hours in their cars, according to the study.

It's a kind of back-handed compliment to Las Vegas, meaning average delays have gotten worse, just not as rapidly as in those other cities, researchers said. Among the cities studied, Seattle, San Diego, Baltimore and Tampa, Fla., all saw double-digit spikes in the amount of time drivers spend in traffic.

Las Vegas, by comparison, saw an increase in drivers' travel times but slow growth in the the number of delays, researchers found.

The U.S. Census Bureau in late March released its own study that found the average Clark County commuter spent 22.7 minutes in a day traffic last year, almost a full two minutes shorter than the nation's average 24.3-minute drive.

The Regional Transportation Commission and several environmental advocacy groups have pointed to those findings as evidence Southern Nevada needs to look at a series of public transit options, including a possible 33-mile regional fixed-guideway system currently being studied by the RTC.

The most recent study, titled the Urban Area Report, found that the more than 22,000 total hours area drivers wasted in traffic have begun taking a toll on drivers' finances, costing them more than $380 million total, up from $346 million the year before. That figure breaks down to $279 per person.

The group in September found that the overall amount of time drivers spent behind the wheel decreased from 28 hours in 2001 to 27 in 2002.

Matt Jeanneret, a spokesman for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, which partnered with the Texas Transportation Institute on its most recently study, said the findings underscored a need for federal legislators to pass a the highway and transit program bill, which Jeanneret said has been "stalled in an ideological and partisan traffic jam."

The $284 billion bill, which has since garnered bipartisan support after amendments raising funds another $10 billion to $15 billion are expected to be attached this week, could pass by the May 31 deadline, he said. Once passed, however, it could still be vetoed by the president.

The traffic back-ups in Las Vegas were part of a national problem ARTBA expects will get worse unless the bill becomes law.

"The biggest thing from this report is that traffic congestion is getting worse in America," Jeanneret said. "This bill is being stalled and it's being stalled at the expense of the American motorist."

Voters in 2002 approved that Question 10 tax package to pay for infrastructure improvements on county roads under the RTC's jurisdiction. That $2.7 billion tax package has paid for an increase in the number of high-speed lane miles, new buses and the RTC's Metropolitan Area Express, a train-like bus that has its own dedicated lane, marking the agency's first foray into fixed-guideway service.

The Road Information Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, in February said shortfalls in state Transportation Department funding could jeopardize future growth in the Las Vegas Valley, as companies would grow leary of a seemingly diminished quality of life created by the traffic.

Transportation Department officials were openly skeptical, saying TRIP researchers were predicting funding concerns up to 10 years into the future.