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Surprisingly, traffic delays in Utah down

After billions of dollars of planning, engineering design, and lengthy delays during I-15 reconstruction, it would be hoped that traffic delays would be down significantly. With the introduction of Trax and other road improvements in Salt Lake County in part at the expense of other road projects outside of Salt Lake County, traffic problems should be plunging downwards. However, this great news can be attributed to the wise forward planning of the Utah Department of Transportation and the Wasatch Front Regional Council and demonstrates the urgent need to continue similar transportation efforts throughout Utah. Utah's rapid population growth is an omen of worse traffic nightmares to come unless Utah continues the Salt Lake County success with other impressive engineering feats. Slowly, such efforts appear to be occurring as such 31st Street and I-15 in Ogden.

Um, I'm not sure if I believe these figuers. Traffic delays have gone DOWN since 1995? Do they take into account all of the construction that started in 1996 after the Olympics were announced. Things were horrible for years! Freeways, roads, light rail...

I'm confused. Various environmental groups keep telling us that increasing road capacity will not help decrease traffic jams. That always seemed like a lie to me. They keep telling us the only option to decrease traffic jams is to build mass transit projects, not roads. Now I find out that building mass transit projects AND roads in conjunction with one another has decreased traffic jams.

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.

Local media and transportation planners have misrepresented the results of this report.

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.

Oliver - the only 'quirk of math' is your inability to understand it. Read the whole report. Travel time index, hours of delay per person, percent of time spent in congested travel, all are down, not up. If you cherry pick one year and compare it to another, yes you can find what you want to support your position. But if you look at trends, the very thing the TTI report suggests, delay is trending down.

The only misrepresentation happening is yours.

It will keep getting worse and worse. I drive opposite traffic on I-15...Southbound in the AM and Northbound in the PM. EVERY SINGLE DAY it is backed up. The I-15 reconstruction was great for about 5 years. The honeymoon is over. Drivers can expect to see increasing traffic congestion from here on out. In another 5 years, I-15 will be too small and turn into a parking lot from 7 to 10 am and from 4 to 7 pm every single night. I-215, Bangerter Highway, I-80, and I-215 will also be packed. Even now its no longer "rush hour"...its "rush 2-3 hours"! Cramming millions of people into a relatively small valley is going to cripple our road systems. Mass transportation is also a joke primarily, because we all live 20-30 miles away from our work place. In my case, I live near Sugarhouse Park and I work by South Town mall. I've looked into taking the bus or tracks BUT it would take 1.5 hours to get to and from work (According to rideuta.com...so probably 2 hours in reality!). NO WAY! I'll take the 20 minute drive. I think most people are in a similar boat.

There is zero truth to these numbers. It's easy to show stats and falsley interpret them. Driving on I-15 is a nightmare, and anyone who has ever done it knows that's true. This was a very misleading article.

Just wanted to respond to JP�s comments.

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.