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Surprisingly, traffic delays in Utah down
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Have these environmental groups been dishonest with the public and maybe UTA and UDOT are the ones who can be trusted with transit decisions? Hmmmmm. I can't wait for Mark Lielesson to speak out against this story and tell us another lie about how mass transit projects are not included in 2030 transit planning.
The decline in the average delay is just a quirk of math: The number of peak travelers increased nearly 30 percent from 1995 to 2005, while overall delays increased nearly 10 percent. So, the total delay is just spread out over a larger number of travelers, but it isn't decreasing.
In fact, the report's key indicator of congestion--the "travel time index"--was the same in 2005 as it was in 1995. So people aren't getting places faster than they were 10 years ago. There are just more drivers stuck in the same traffic jams.
All this even with billions of dollars spent on roads in Salt Lake County and with more lanes being built every year. The congestion won't change until we make fundamental changes in our modes of travel.
The only misrepresentation happening is yours.
Yes, I could have �cherry-picked� years to support my argument. Instead, I went with the years used as reference points in the article (1995 and 2005).
The indicators that JP cites have indeed gone down--in the past three years or so. Congestion spiked from the late 1990s through 2004�-probably due to short-term traffic impacts from I-15 construction and Olympics-related activity rather than to any fundamental growth trends. So it's tough to draw valid long-term conclusions by analyzing data from those years.
We could continue to argue about what the data say. But what�s most accurate are on-the-ground observations like Q�s and Jack�s.