DALLAS — North Texas continues to get more accolades and population – and also traffic.
The Dallas area rose to No. 8 on the 2020 list of urban areas for the worst traffic by a key measure around the extra time a commuter must endure, according the 2021 Urban Mobility Report by The Texas A&M Transportation Institute with cooperation from INRIX.
That compares to No. 16 in 2019 for the local region.
The New York area took the top spot in 2020 followed by the Boston metro. The Houston region, which already was ranked higher than the Dallas area in 2019, shot up to No. 3. The biggest California metros -- Los Angeles and San Francisco – tied for No. 4. The Washington, D.C., area took No. 6.
Austin, while not among the biggest metro areas, took No. 7. That’s up from No. 12.
The new report, released at the end of last month, examines traffic among a most unusual shift in patterns amid the challenges of COVID-19 and local restrictions around the country. It said there were essentially four “unique congestion years in one” during 2020, including the time before the pandemic, the period after it began, an initial recovery and then a more normal time in the fall.
“Annual 2020 congestion costs and travel delay were about half of the 2019 problem — total congestion delay was like 1997, more than two decades ago,” the report said. “Per commuter cost was less than 1982 in constant 2020 dollars.”
Still, even with the dramatic decline in 2020 congestion levels, the trends in the last few months of 2020 point to a return of congestion problems in 2021, the report said. For the Dallas area, other data points to more traffic showing up in recent months around the region.
While North Texas in 2020 slipped in its ranking it was still slightly better than the average among very large urban areas, or those with over 3 million in population. The average was 84 hours in 2019 for the annual amount of delay per commuter and fell to 41 hours in 2020 based on 2019 drivers. The Dallas area was at 40. Houston was at 49. Austin was 41.
