DC Area Traffic is Getting Better

• February 27th 2009

by Mark Wellborn

Traffic congestion in the DC Metro area is improving. (That is not a typo.) A report from Inrix Inc. says that there was a 26 percent drop in area congestion in 2008, according to the Washington Business Journal.

The reduction means that DC is now the 5th most congested city in the U.S., an improvement from its 4th place ranking in 2007.

Inrix notes that DC’s worst peak traffic comes between 5 and 6 p.m. on Thursdays (just to give you an idea as to when you should stay off the road). The Journal noted that DC has three highway sections that are in the slowest 200 nationwide:

“The quarter-mile northbound stretch of I-395 at the George Washington Memorial Parkway interchange in Arlington County ranked No. 84 in 2007, with an average speed of 10.5 mph when backed up — which is an average of 43 hours a week. This year it fell to No. 176, and its average speed during congestion is 13.2 mph, or 34 hours per week.

The second worst bottleneck in the area is the 1.7-mile stretch down Interstate 95 at the exit for the Fairfax County Parkway, where the average speed during congestion is nearly 19 mph.

The area’s third most backed up bottleneck is a segment of Interstate 66 eastbound, at the Dulles Toll Road, a less-than-quarter-mile stretch that moves at 13 mph.”

Other cities that made this dubious list:

1. Los Angeles
2. New York
3. Chicago
4. Dallas
5. Washington, DC
6. Houston
7. San Francisco
8. Boston
9. Seattle
10. Minneapolis-St.Paul

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_area_traffic_is_getting_better/596.