Area Traffic Accelerates Well Past Nation’s Going Rate

By Dave Downey, North County Times, Escondido, Calif.

Sep. 19–Traffic is getting worse everywhere, but conditions are deteriorating faster in San Diego and Riverside counties than in almost every other region of the country, according to a report released Tuesday.

Chicago is the only city where traffic has gotten worse between 1982 and 2005, the period that the Texas Transportation Institute has been measuring in ranking the nation’s traffic congestion.

Among the nation’s 85 largest metropolitan areas, San Diego County now ranks fourth worst and Riverside County rates ninth worst, based on the amount of extra time it took for commuters to drive to jobs during rush hour in 2005, the report states.

Analysts and transportation officials said the deteriorating conditions are the byproducts of a strong regional economy and a road-building program that has lagged well behind population growth. The conditions also stem from the soaring prices that are driving many to buy homes far from their jobs.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Rick Reiss of Temecula, who commutes 62 miles to downtown San Diego. “More people keep coming to California. It’s like a shopping mall at Christmas time — there are more people than the freeways can handle. And it just keeps getting worse and worse.”

Nor did the rankings take transportation officials by surprise.

“We have a lot of nice beaches, but we also have a lot of traffic,” said Pedro Orso-Delgado, the California Department of Transportation’s San Diego district director.

In San Diego County, rush-hour commutes take 40 percent longer than commutes where traffic is free flowing, which the institute defines as 60 mph on freeways and 35 mph on surface streets. In Riverside County, commutes take 35 percent longer.

For example, a typical Temecula-to-San Diego trip that takes one hour during the middle of the day or late at night, takes 84 minutes on weekday mornings. And the 40-minute drive from Murrieta to Riverside takes 54 minutes during rush hour.

The report estimated that commuters in both counties spent, on average, more than two days in 2005 sitting in traffic. San Diego-area commuters wasted 57 hours and Riverside County drivers lost 49 hours.

That’s way up from the amount of time that traffic cost commuters in 1982, when people were stuck for just 12 hours a year in San Diego County and five hours in Riverside County.

The accelerated deterioration is due in large part to the region’s prosperity, said Tim Lomax, a research engineer for the institute who helped write the report.

“Riverside and San Diego have been two of the big growth markets over the last two decades,” Lomax said.

Money could help ease traffic

The deteriorating conditions also are a result of limited investment in transportation projects, he said.

Orso-Delgado said spending has lagged well behind growth in traffic volume because of a cutoff in state funding a few years ago and a statewide focus on bolstering bridges to withstand earthquakes in the last decade.

On the bright side, Lomax said, the region is poised to make significant investments over the next several years. Both counties are preparing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars that were awarded to them from the $20 billion state transportation bond voters approved in November.

“You don’t see that size of program in very many places around the country,” Lomax said.

With state bond money and local sales tax revenue, regional transportation agencies are preparing to widen large sections of Interstates 5, 15 and 215, and Highways 76 and 78.

“We think we’ve got a program that will allow us to bring some relief,” Gary Gallegos, executive director of the San Diego Association of Governments, said at a news conference in San Diego on Tuesday.

Gallegos said it may take a few years — possibly until the 2010 report — to see improvements in the counties’ nationwide ranking because there is a two-year delay between the times data are gathered and reports are delivered.

He said commuters should feel relief right away on the routes where projects are being built.

Gallegos stressed it will take more than money, however, to improve conditions. He said the region must place more housing closer to San Diego’s robust job market and more top-dollar jobs in Riverside County’s sprawling bedroom communities to address the economic conditions that are producing lengthy commutes and unnerving congestion.

“People are still moving to Temecula and moving to Lake Elsinore,” Gallegos said.

Gallegos called it the “drive until you qualify” trend. “San Diegans are driving farther and farther to find affordable housing,” he said.

Reiss was one of those who decided to shop for a home in Riverside County after finding he could only qualify for a two-bedroom duplex in Poway. And when he started commuting from Temecula to San Diego in 2000, it was “clear sailing.”

But now the drive takes at least 15 minutes longer each way, Reiss said.

Candice Batze of French Valley, who works as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company in Sorrento Valley, said things have gotten so bad she aims to get out the door no later than 5:15 a.m. If she misses that self-imposed deadline, her commute lengthens from 60 minutes to 90.

Batze said congestion has been following her throughout Southern California. She moved to Carmel Mountain Ranch in 1988 and to Southwest Riverside County in 2003.

“The funny thing is that we moved from Orange County because the traffic was so bad, and then we moved from San Diego County because the traffic was so bad,” Batze said.

As bad as it is in San Diego and Riverside counties, the Los Angeles-Orange County region is still the nation’s congestion king; commuters there waste three days a year sitting in traffic, the report showed.

Rounding out the worst 10 are Chicago, second; San Francisco, third; San Diego County, fourth; New York, fifth; Miami, sixth; Washington, seventh; Houston, eighth; and Dallas and Riverside County, tied for ninth.

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Copyright (c) 2007, North County Times, Escondido, Calif.

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