Not that long ago, if you found yourself sitting in traffic on the Beltway or 270, surrounded by some of the 200,000 other vehicles who travel on each road every day pre-COVID-19, you might have wondered where all of them are coming from.

The conventional wisdom is that most highway traffic comes from people traveling long distances: for instance, trucks carrying freight across state lines, or commuters crossing county lines on their way to work. Yet most trips we take are short.

Every eight years, the National Household Travel Survey asks people across the United States, including here in Maryland, how they get around, where they go, and how long it takes. The most recent edition is from 2017, and it’s a good indication of where traffic on our local roads comes from.

What does this survey tell us? For starters, just 19% of the trips people take each year are for work or work-related activities. When we leave the house, 38% of the time we’re going shopping, 28% we’re headed to social or recreational activities, and 11% are for trips to school or houses of worship.

It’s one reason why, even as schools and many workplaces around Maryland have closed to reduce the spread of coronavirus, traffic on Maryland highways has fallen by 40% as people continue to make trips for essential jobs or to buy groceries.

Another statistic sticks out: 60% of all trips made in the United States are less than six miles long, and 35% of all trips are under three miles. Meanwhile, 83% of all trips made nationwide are in a private vehicle. In other words, most drivers on our highways aren’t traveling very far.

While vehicle miles traveled — a measure of how much everyone in Maryland is driving — has increased as our population has grown, these statistics suggest that there’s another way. All of these short trips, and trips to activities that aren’t a commute to work, are the kind of journeys where non-driving travel modes might be competitive with driving.

For instance, if you’re only traveling a short distance, it may take the same amount of time to walk there, or even to wait a few minutes for a bus, then to drive, sit in traffic, and find parking. What if we made it more comfortable, reliable, and safer to do that instead? It wouldn’t take much to see a big difference. Before COVID-19, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments reported an 18% decrease in daily delays with a 1% decrease in the number of vehicles.

Could the solution to highway congestion not involve highways at all? Here’s what that would look like:

Making it safer to walk and bike places. Many communities in Maryland lack safe sidewalks, crosswalks, or bike lanes. The results can be dangerous: in 2017, over 4,100 pedestrians and bicyclists statewide were involved in a crash. Yet it wouldn’t cost a lot to make our streets safer.

The City of Portland found that building out an entire bicycle network – dozens of miles – cost just $60 million, comparable to a single mile of urban freeway. Closer to home, Baltimore County built a half-mile of sidewalk on a suburban street for $125,000, or $250,000 per mile. That might sound like a lot, but compare it to the proposed widening of 270 and 495, which would cost $128 million per mile to build.

Speeding up bus service. Today, buses across Maryland can be slow and infrequent, in part because they get stuck in traffic. One solution are dedicated bus lanes, which cities around the United States have found can reduce travel times by 20%, make bus schedules more reliable, and even cut traffic collisions. Riders in Baltimore had the same experience when that city installed bus lanes on several downtown streets in 2019. That’s why other jurisdictions, including Montgomery, Prince George’s, and Howard counties, plan to do the same.

Keeping our infrastructure in good repair. Maryland’s roads are aging, which can cause significant travel delays and put drivers in danger. The State Highway Administration found 52 bridges and overpasses in “poor” condition on major highways, like I-83 in Baltimore County, I-270 in Frederick County, I-95 in Prince George’s County, I-70 in Washington County. Some of these structures are over 50 years old. The same goes for our rail transit, like the Washington Metro and Baltimore Subway, both of which have recently been shut down due to deferred maintenance. Keeping our highways and train lines in good repair will make all of our trips more reliable and safer.

Investing in rapid transit. MARC commuter rail is the fastest in the nation, running up to 125 miles an hour in some segments, offering a huge time savings to drivers stuck in traffic. That is, depending on which direction and time of day you’re traveling, or if the train doesn’t break down.

For years, Maryland has envisioned for all-day, all-week MARC service on all three lines, but can’t move forward without funding. The same goes for local transit projects, like the Baltimore Red Line and Corridor Cities Transitway in Montgomery County, which could deliver substantial time savings but are currently unfunded.

Telecommuting programs. This spring, many Marylanders have tried teleworking for the first time as offices close due to COVID-19. While these are difficult circumstances for employees to try working from home for the first time, some organizations may find that telecommuting is a viable solution for the future, allowing workers to avoid commuting altogether and reducing traffic on area roads.

It may seem counterintuitive that bike lanes or better buses would affect your drive time. Yet decades of disinvestment in everything but highways have created a situation where people drive by default. In many communities in Maryland, people choose to drive because it is at best inconvenient and at worse dangerous to travel another way, making it harder for everyone to get around. As plans to widen Maryland highways move forward, so should a public discussion of the issue.

How we get around is only part of the equation. In our next installment, we’ll talk about the other half of the solution: how the ways our communities are built and organized keeps us in traffic, and what we can do about it.

This is the second in a series of articles, written by Dan Reed in partnership with the Maryland Sierra Club, on causes, impacts and solutions to traffic and transportation. All articles will be published on Greater Greater Washington.