Traffic Stinks

As I was making my ridiculous hour long drive to school which is only about 20 miles from my house I was wondering which is worse San Antonio traffic or Houston's (I have lived in the Houston area most of my life). And decided this a job for....URBAN GEOGRAPHY!!!! I became ambitious, and decided why stop there? Let's compare San Antonio and Houston and also laugh at the top 5 worst traffic cities in the U.S. and be glad we don't live there.

I decided to take screenshots of the traffic map for all the cities at around 4:30-5:00pm, that's when I find traffic is the worst. 

San Antonio 

San Antonio is a radial city, consisting of two loops with highways and interstates forming a spider web like pattern.The problem spots seem to be the 1604(outer loop)/I-10 intersection, the 1-10 to 410 (inner loop) West ramp and just I-35 in general especially where it meets 1604. The issue with the outer loop where it meets I-10 on the Northwest side of the city is that there is a stretch of 1604 in which the highway is only two lanes and there are several intersections with stop lights this creates a severe backlog. The 410 entrance ramp in the west central section is backed up most of the time but this bottleneck moves quickly and has nothing on I-35. This freeway has been under construction for the entire 3 years I have lived here. Of course, I said the same thing about another road and was corrected. Apparently it had only been under construction for a few months, then again it was an 8 year old who said this so I don't know who is more reliable me or him. 

Houston- also a radial city

I have lived in the city of Houston for most of my life and now that I'm looking at the maps it's completely obvious that Houston is worse. The thing about Houston is many people work downtown and live in the suburbs, so at about 5 o'clock every day there is a mass exodus out of the inner city. The inner loop, which at some points is only two lanes, is the way most people get to the highways that lead to the outer city. This creates massive congestion, the outer loop is an alternative but that gets backed up as well. Sidenote: the outer loop is a toll road. My best Houston traffic story is when I was trying to get from Sugar Land which is Southwest and I was trying to get to South Central Houston I left around 7 and arrived around 9. They closed highway 59, now I-69, down to one lane and delayed me 2 hours. Yay. 

Now that we have covered my two Texas towns let's look at the worst traffic cities in the U.S. different websites rate these cities in different orders so I decided to put them in order of hours wasted a year in traffic. 

#1 Los Angeles 

Hours Lost Annually: 64 Hours

The city of dreams, disappointments, and apparently bumper to bumper traffic. 

#2 Honolulu

Hours Lost Annually: 60 

I guess when you only have one major road....

#3 San Francisco 

Hours Lost Annually: 56

Another victim of the one major highway epidemic.

#4 New York

Hours Lost Annually: 53

Just...no. 

Seriously, do you see all those yellow caution triangles?!?

#5 Austin 

Hours Lost Annually: 41

I have been in this dark red death trap and barely made it out alive, but really though we were rear ended. 

#6 Washington D.C.

Hours Lost Annually: 40

I have also been in this trap and it was not fun.

Now we know to avoid rush hour and if you cant avoid rush hour use your handy dandy traffic map and drive past all the other suckers who didn't.

Bonus points if you noticed my Legend of Zelda walkthrough tab in all the screenshots. Yeah I was rocking that N64!

Sources: 

Google Maps

Forbes.com