Portland traffic got worse in 2017, leaving the average driver stuck in congestion another three hours a year.

A new report from the Kirkland, Washington, data firm Inrix found the average Portland driver spent 50 hours in rush-hour crawl in 2017, compared with 47 a year earlier. About 20 percent of driving commute times are spent in congestion during peak hours, the company said.

That would make Portland traffic the 12th worst in the nation, and Inrix says the resulting delays collectively cost $3.9 billion in fuel, lost time and freight delays. That comes out to $1,648 a year per metro resident.

Inrix takes a big-data approach, gathering information from 300 million cars and devices, and covers both freeways and major arterial streets.

An improving economy put far more cars and trucks on the road more often. Vehicle-miles have climbed as people increase their driving for work, travel and commerce.

There are plenty of criticisms of these kinds of reports, chief among them is that they set a baseline of "free-flow" speeds. That can mean driving the posted speed limit is considered an effect congestion. Congestion studies also tend to understate the effects of shorter commutes in small and compact metro areas such as Portland's.

Portlanders are historically freeway-averse, having in the 1970s bucked plans to build the Mount Hood Freeway through Southeast Portland and ripped out Harbor Drive, a downtown freeway through what's now the Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

State legislators and local officials have backed plans to expand sections of freeways in an effort to move more cars through bottlenecks. But some transportation activists have moved to have the projects scrapped because they would likely encourage more people to drive.

At the same time, the state is exploring rush-hour tolls intended to reduce demand during the freeways' busiest hours, and it's dramatically increasing funding of public transportation across the state in coming years.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus