Metro Denver highways are backing up more often, and traffic is crawling more slowly on some downtown streets during rush hour — even if commuting patterns don’t look the same as they did three years ago.
An annual study released this month ranked the Denver area 17th-worst for traffic impact among U.S. metropolitan regions in 2022. Congestion at peak times cost drivers an average 54 hours, according to the Global Traffic Scorecard released by Inrix Research, a global mobility data company. It estimated the value of that wasted time at $912 per driver.
On downtown Denver streets, average speeds during rush hour were measured at 14 mph, a decrease of 13% from 2021.
But zoom out, and it’s clear that the emerging post-pandemic normal — more office work being done at home or in hybrid home/office arrangements — is reshaping commute patterns. Some weekdays are worse than others, and traffic tends to be spread out over more hours of the day.
The average time Denver area drivers wasted in traffic in 2022 was still down 14% from the 63 hours estimated by Inrix in 2019, when Denver ranked 21st for traffic impact. Last year’s 54 hours were up from 40 hours in 2021 and just 24 hours in 2020, when many residents were marooned at home for a good chunk of the year.
Denver’s placement on Inrix’s “impact” rankings — which weigh the lost-time metric by city size — improved to 17th from 15th last year. But the area’s traffic levels were already recovering ahead of the national average, so that means other cities are catching up.
Ranking worst for traffic impact were Chicago (155 hours lost in traffic), Boston (134 hours), New York City (117 hours), Philadelphia (114 hours) and Miami (105 hours). While Chicago and Miami exceeded their 2019 traffic delays, most regions still lagged.
Several factors are at play on a national scale, an Inrix official said.
“2022 was shaping up to be a year of re-emergence and a return to a new, post-pandemic behavioral norm, but that halted with the rise in oil prices, supply chain disruptions and inflation,” Bob Pishue, an Inrix transportation analyst, said in a news release. “Despite geopolitical and economic uncertainties, we continued to see a rise in global vehicle-miles traveled, a return toward traditional morning and evening peak commutes, growth in public transportation use and continued gains in downtown travel.”
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