According to a major North American traffic study, the average Calgarian with a half hour commute spends about three days a year stuck in traffic.
The makers of the Tom Tom GPS Navigation System used its traffic data from 26 North American cities to create an extensive study on traffic congestion.
Calgary comes in at number 16 in terms of the worst gridlock on city streets.
Los Angeles was number 1, followed by Vancouver and then San Francisco.
Calgary roads are more congested that bigger cities like San Diego and Dallas.
During the last quarter, traffic troubles in rush hour spiked and the city says that is due mostly to population growth.
“Approximately 30,000 new Calgarians, which when you sort of divide that up is approximately 80 people per day. That's if you want to sort of run those numbers further that's approximately two busloads of people per day,” said John Bolger, head of the city’s Optimization Department.
Jana Benz has a huge commute and travels three hours every day from her home to drop her kids off and then on to her job.
Benz says the long drives are leading to some dangerous behaviors behind the wheel.
“Lots of tailgating, one of my favourites, a lot of aggressive driving, but I suppose you have to be if you want to survive in rush hour,” said Benz.
Calgarians are tied-up in traffic a lot longer than our neighbours to the north.
When compared with Edmonton, Calgary commuters were delayed by 28 minutes per hour during rush hour and Edmontonians are only held up for 16 minutes per hour.
The average Calgarian with a 30 minute commute spends about 73 hours stuck in traffic compared to just 48 hours for Edmontonians.
The city and Tom Tom say there are four things you can do to avoid traffic delays:
- Avoid driving on Thursdays
- Leave late on Tuesdays
- Pick alternate routes
- Change departure time
The city says there are about 1518 kilometers of roads in Calgary.
