Houston Traffic

It’s something every Houstonian experiences – some daily and others only on special occasions – traffic! Every week there is a local news article about new or continuing road closures in the Houston metropolitan area, and even meme showing stand still traffic on highways stating that Houston is closed due to overpopulation (we average 1-2% population growth per year). Construction to widen or repair roads seems to be a constant, especially on I45 and SH290 and the outward growth has spurred new roadway developments in more rural areas including our soon to be 3rd loop - SH99, the Grand Parkway. Still it could be worse. We are ranked 11th in the country on traffic and 37th on congestion. It is estimated that Houstonians spent 2 days in 2017 commuting. Dallas on the other had made the top 10 and drivers spent an estimated 56 hours in their cars. Los Angeles remains tops on the bad traffic list with 102 hours per year spent in transit. LA has held the worst traffic title for 6 years. Houston traffic seems to vary widely day to day even at the same time of day. How to be sure you’re leaving the house at the right time?  Houston TranStar has a mobile app to keep you updated on traffic and road conditions and emergency info. Google maps is sometimes reliable, but often has a slight delay – it is no fun leaving your house on time only to find out once you reach your car that your commute has increased by 10 minutes! There is also an app called Waze that can help you navigate side streets and fight highway congestion based on real time assessment by the community of app users. It can also help you find the cheapest gasoline nearby in addition to prevention of surprise slow downs. What is no surprise is that our worst traffic bottlenecks occur on highways downtown including the I45 and Loop 610 interchanges and the I10-SH59 interchange. I was surprised that SH290 wasn’t listed because it’s standing still almost every time I have to use it! And it is currently being widened and adjusted from Loop 610 to FM2920. It appears that several projects are in the works to ease traffic congestion around town, and though adjusting routes and travel times may be frustrating, we just have to hope this round of construction does the trick.