Boston commuters: wheels of fortune
City ranks low on woe, but high on congestion

By Raphael Lewis, Boston Globe Staff, 5/8/2001

Move over, El Paso.

Because a quarter of metro Bostonians don't drive to work, commuters face fewer hassles than those in smaller cities like Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, and Omaha, according to a national transportation study released yesterday.

The Surface Transportation Policy Project study, which examined America's 68 largest urban areas, found that Boston ranks 47th for its ''Congestion Burden Index,'' which measures not only highway congestion, but the percentage of commuters affected by it each day.

And Boston, at 75 percent, has the nation's third-lowest percentage of commuters who drive to work, the project found. As a result, the frustration drivers experience at rush hour is not nearly as bad as in places like Atlanta, where nearly 90 percent of workers commute by car.

Of course, things in Boston are still ugly.

In fact, a separate study released yesterday by the Texas Transportation Institute found that Boston-area highways are growing more crowded at a faster pace than most cities.

The TTI study indicates that the metro area's roads were the sixth-most congested of any urban center in America in 1999, up eight places since 1982. Boston's highways are now ''extremely'' congested 48 percent of the time, the researchers found, and the typical driver loses 28 hours a year to jam-ups.

Adding insult to injury, the Hub's rise in the TTI rankings happened as the area's rank in population slipped from 7th to 9th place, according to the US Census Bureau.

But because 25 percent of the region's workers use mass transit, ride a bike, or walk to work, the STPP study found, Bostonians as a whole have an easier commute than folks in El Paso, Oklahoma City, and Nashville, where workers have far fewer transportation options.

The moral of the story is simple, says the Conservation Law Foundation's Seth Kaplan: Give commuters more options, and they will use them.

''No one is saying that the traffic in Omaha is worse than in Boston. That would be absurd,'' said Kaplan, whose organization helped release the STPP study. The Conservation Law Foundation, like the STPP, is an environmental advocacy organization.

''What we are saying is, because only 8 percent of people in Omaha don't drive to work, almost everyone feels the brunt of highway congestion. That's not the case here at all,'' Kaplan said.

Los Angeles, where 87.4 percent of the workforce drives, tops the STPP's Congestion Burden Index list; commuters there can expect to lose 56 hours a year to traffic jams. Following LA: fast-growing Las Vegas and car-loving Detroit.

The least burdensome commute, the study found, is in Boulder, Colo., where fewer than three-quarters of commuters use cars, almost 10 percent walk, and 6 percent take mass transit.

The STPP study found that more than 15 percent of Boston commuters use buses, trains, and the subway, the highest percentage outside New York City, Chicago, and Washington. Another 6.8 percent of Bostonians walk to the office, second only to Boulder.

Jon Carlisle, a spokesman for Kevin Sullivan, the state transportation secretary, said the statistics reflect that Bostonians have embraced the services of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. He and Kaplan said the study bolsters the T's recent rail expansions to places like Worcester and Newburyport.

Boston's mass transit user percentage ''is a good and impressive figure, when judged against other areas,'' Carlisle said. ''But we think we could get that number bigger.''

However, David Luberoff, a transportation researcher at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said he thinks such interpretations of the data are ''leaps of logic.''

''There's an assumption here that all congestion is the result of commuting, and that's not the case at all,'' Luberoff said. ''Nationwide, [mass] transit is only carrying 2 percent of all urban travel. I think, if there's an interest in expanding the T's ridership, there are ways to do that'' without spending money to expand transit lines.

Kaplan said the data clearly indicate a need ''to maintain and enhance'' the current mass-transit system. ''We're not talking about new lines to the suburbs. We're talking about focused projects that would make the system work better.''

''I think the real point, the real news here, is that you can't build roads to get out of congestion problems,'' Kaplan concluded.

''You need to diversify what you offer, and it's working in Boston.''

For more information on the Surface Transportation Policy Project report, visit the organization's website at www.transact.org. For information on the Texas Transportation Institute report, visit mobility.tamu.edu.