Image: ARC
The latest Atlanta Regional Commission’s “Regional Snapshot” shows how Atlanta’s traffic congestion stats stacks up against 14 other major metros. The ARC analyzed data from the American Community Survey, the American Transportation Research Institute and the Texas Transportation Institute and found Atlanta ranked:
- 11th for total hours of congestion-related delays
- 9th for the total number of jobs
- 4th for the total number of hours that commuters spend traveling to their jobs each year. The Atlanta metro average was 126 hours per year, which equals about three weeks of workdays.
- 4th for the percentage of workers who have at least a 45-minute commute to work
- 1st in the Southeast for congestion cost per commuter. Here’s how the congestion cost was calculated
Metro Atlanta’s I-285 and 1-85 North interchange also ranked ninth among the 250 most congested bottlenecks in the country, according to American Transportation Research Institute data.
A possible upside to those numbers: “Areas with the most jobs tend to also have the most congestion,” the ARC report said. So, Atlanta’s status as a major job center is still intact, but that might soon be overshadowed by its reputation as a place to sit in traffic on the way to those jobs.
The Oppidan Omnibus 
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