Bay Area stuck with congestion like L.A.'s Bay Area is stuck with equal congestion, study finds

Traffic crawls towards the Bay Bridge toll plaza on Friday, Feb. 8, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. According to the Urban Mobility Report, the Bay Area ties Los Angeles for having the second-worst congestion in the country. less Traffic crawls towards the Bay Bridge toll plaza on Friday, Feb. 8, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. According to the Urban Mobility Report, the Bay Area ties Los Angeles for having the second-worst congestion in the ... more Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Bay Area stuck with congestion like L.A.'s 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

The Bay Area's traffic congestion is as bad as Los Angeles', according to the latest version of a respected national transportation study. For Bay Area residents, this may seem unfathomable, unthinkable and an insult to regional pride.

Anyone who's sat in one of the Southern California parking lots called a freeway knows that traffic there seems far more pervasive, persistent and painful than it does in the Bay Area. But according to the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Report, the San Francisco-Oakland region is indeed tied with L.A. for second place - behind Washington, D.C. - for yearly delay caused by congestion.

According to the study, car commuters here and in Los Angeles each endure 61 hours per year of delays, tied for second place among the nation's 15 largest metropolitan regions and 101 urban areas in the study. Washington topped the list at 67 hours.

But are we really as bad as L.A.?

"The numbers say that," said David Schrank, associate research scientist at the institute, part of Texas A&M University. "But I think the San Francisco congestion is a little bit different."

Bridges, tunnels, tolls

Much of the Bay Area backup, he said, is due to bridges, tunnels and toll collection, whereas Los Angeles' gridlock is the product of an overwhelming volume of cars and trucks crammed onto its massive collection of concrete arteries. The Bay Area's congestion at the peak of the commute is less extreme than in many metro areas, he said, which means that traffic backups outside of the normal commute periods contribute to the region's overall delay rankings.

Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said the Bay Area likely suffers more weekend backups than most areas, citing Interstate 80 traffic through Berkeley and Emeryville, I-80 in Solano County on Sunday nights, and Highway 101 in Sonoma County.

"Our weekend traffic is often worse than weekday traffic," he said. "That's not true in most metropolitan areas."

Schrank was also quick to point out that the delay ranking, while the most publicized, is just one of about 20 in the study. Looking at them all, he said, gives a clearer picture of the Bay Area's traffic congestion and its impacts - especially in comparison with Los Angeles. Here are some other categories and rankings about the impact on drivers:

-- Travel time index, contrasting the time it takes for a commuter to make a trip in peak congestion with the time it takes in free-flowing traffic: San Francisco-Oakland 23rd; Los Angeles first.

-- Excess fuel consumption because of congestion: San Francisco-Oakland was sixth, at 25 gallons a year; Los Angeles third, at 27 gallons; Washington first, at 32 gallons.

-- Yearly congestion cost per commuter: San Francisco-Oakland was fourth, at $1,266; Los Angeles second, at $1,300; Washington first, at $1,398.

Looking at cumulative congestion, other regions are far worse than the Bay Area, which ranked eighth with 155 million extra hours spent sitting in traffic. That's far below first-place New York's total of 544 million hours and second-place Los Angeles' 501 million hours.

The annual cost of congestion to the Bay Area - including delays, excess fuel consumption and truck delays - is $3.3 billion, or eighth. That compares with No. 1 New York, at $11.8 billion, and No. 2 Los Angeles, at $10.8 billion.

Measures that help

Bay Area congestion would be much worse, the study found, were it not for the extensive public transportation system and use of operational approaches such as ramp metering, carpool lanes and traffic signal coordination. The region ranked third in the nation, behind Los Angeles and New York, for reducing traffic through such operational approaches, and fourth behind New York, Chicago and Boston for trimming traffic with transit.

For many commuters, the worst part of congestion is not the wasted time or gas - it's the stress. But the Bay Area ranks very low on the commuter stress index. We're No. 37 nationally.

"You guys are more laid back," Schrank chuckled.

The stress index is similar to the travel time index, comparing "travel time in the peak period to the travel time at free-flow conditions," but specifically "for the peak directions of travel." Honolulu ranked No. 1.

So, really, is the Bay Area backup as bad as L.A. gridlock?

"I don't know," Rentschler said. "Where we are bad, we are probably as bad as L.A. But in sheer scale, L.A. has more bad. We may have two or three spots that are miserable, but they probably have eight or nine - or more."