Public Transportation vs. Congested Highway Corridors
/According to Smart Growth America, investment in public transportation creates 31 percent more jobs than investment in road and bridge infrastructure. Transit use also reduces traffic congestion, which can also serve to benefit the economy. In 2011, congestion cost Connecticut nearly $1 billion in lost time, wasted fuel and lost productivity, according to the 2011 Urban Mobility Report. Among the most congested highway corridors in the nation: Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, as reported in the 2011 Congested Corridors Report, developed by the Texas Transportation Institute, part of Texas A&M University. The inaugural 2011 report is the first nationwide effort to identify reliability problems at specific stretches of highway responsible for significant traffic congestion at different times and different days. Analyses are performed along 328 specific (directional) freeway corridors in the United States.