About

Traffic congestion and delay are characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased queuing. They are the indicators of traffic demand that is greater than the available capacity of the road network. These conditions are exacerbated by various land use and infrastructure investment decisions that do not promote the most efficient use of the transportation network

Daily person hours of delay is calculated by determining the difference between the estimated travel time under actual (often congested) conditions and under uncongested conditions, for each highway segment and each hour of the day. These hourly delays per vehicle are multiplied by the annual average hourly traffic for each hour, and summed to get total daily vehicle hours of delay. They can then be multiplied by the vehicle occupancy to get total person hours of delay.

Florida Intrastate Highway System (FIHS) consists of following road networks: interstates, the Turnpike Enterprise, freeways, and other high speed, high volume roadways.

The FIHS consists of about 1.7 percent of total centerline miles on Florida’s road network but it carried about 24 percent of total daily vehicle miles traveled in 2006.

Congestion and Delay trends are shown on the website using the following indicators: statewide delay on FIHS, delay on FIHS in the 7 largest counties (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Orange, Pinellas, Duval), and percentage of centerline miles congested on FIHS with change in population and lane miles.

The source of this data is the Florida Department of Transportation's (FDOT) Highway Data Source Book. The FDOT publishes this source book yearly. This indicator has a one year lag time. To learn more about these topics visit: http://www.dot.state.fl.us/planning/statistics/sourcebook

For further information on this topic contact:

Gordon Morgan

Transportation Statistics Office, Mail Station 27

Florida Department of Transportation

605 Suwannee Street

Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0450

Telephone: (850) 414-4730

Fax: (850) 414-4878