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Before 2020, a free Interstate 35 in the middle of the day might have been a dream.
However, a recent A&M study in Texas showed that traffic in urban areas may have felt like three decades back with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak last March. That’s because Austin and across the country have seen traffic levels drop to levels that haven’t been widespread since 1991.
According to the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report 2021, the time Austin drivers spent in traffic decreased by a whopping 40% in 2020. Everything from gas prices to carbon emissions fell as shop closings, government home orders, and other restrictions kept many motorists off the road.
More:Almost 30% of workers would quit if they had to return to office after a pandemic
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The Urban Mobility Report 2021 compared the traffic experience in 2020 with four years in one. The analysis was compiled from federal, state, and private data analyzing vehicle volumes and trends in the United States
Traffic in January and February 2020 was very similar to 2019, according to the report. Then came the pandemic, which caused the sharpest declines that researchers at Texas A&M have ever seen, dating back to when the first mobility report was produced in the early 1980s.
Traffic jams fell between 60 and 75% depending on the subway area, to a level last seen in 1991.
By the summer, the workforce’s traffic patterns had normalized and the delays increased. The rush hour was back, but at the level of traffic in 2000.
Autumn traffic jams continued to increase, but remained 40 to 50% below 2019 levels and more in line with 2005 levels, the report said.
More:The Austin area remains one of the fastest growing areas in the country, according to the latest census estimates
One traffic segment that stayed close to 2019 levels was trucks. While trucks experienced fewer congestion due to the lower volume of traffic on the roads, trucks continued to drive goods to the communities.
In some respects, those trips actually spiked as deliveries from online retailers like Amazon increased and people became more likely to use grocery delivery services, said David Cabinet, senior research analyst at Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M.
“There have been rides on the road,” said closet. “It wasn’t necessarily in our own car, but it was for us.”
Among Texas’s largest cities, Austin had the second worst number of traffic delays in 2020, slightly behind Houston. For metropolitan areas defined as large in the study – populations between 1 million and 3 million – Austin had the worst traffic in the country. It was the seventh worst overall if you count the largest metropolitan areas in the country. New York City commuters had the longest delays.
The pandemic offered something of a random experiment in traffic patterns. Even if the traffic volume reached 80 to 95% of the level of 2019, the congestion delays remained strongly behind. This has shown how small reductions in overall traffic can result in large reductions in congestion, as roads are less likely to hit a tipping point of capacity that can lead to traffic blackouts.
It has also proven that working from home is a viable tool for reducing traffic, Cabinet said.
“Teleworking and that was always possible,” he said. “We never had a chance to know anything other than to model it. Well, now we’ve seen it. And the public has seen it. And that’s probably how it will play a role in the future.”
Surveys have shown that a significant number of workers say they would quit their jobs if they were forced to return to the office, and many employers are switching to either full remote work or a hybrid model. That could make reduced traffic the new normal, at least for the time being.
Cabinet said it will likely take between two and five years to fully determine the effects of the relocation on homeworking. And even then, many metropolitan areas like Austin are likely to continue to show high growth rates. That will continue to pollute the streets, he said.
However, some say 2020 has shown that infrastructure policy needs a complete overhaul.
“We have the opportunity to create a new system – one based on zero-emission electric vehicles, expanded public transport, teleworking, and improved access to active modes of transport such as walking and cycling,” said Luke Metzger, Executive Director of Environment Texas Austin-based environmental protection group.
“These are the tools that should be at the fore in efforts to rid our roads of polluting fossil fuel vehicles in a redesigned transport policy that puts public health and the environment first.”
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