On May 9, for instance, the NY Times headlined: “In Study of Nation’s Worst Traffic, New York Must Yield.” The article stated: “Where the average resident of those metropolitan areas loses more than 50 hours a year to traffic delays, New Yorkers lose an average of 34 hours a year, the study found.” That calculus put NY in 23^rd place, behind the likes of Nashville and Austin.

But this per person result is clearly the result of the NY/Northern NJ region’s very high transit ridership.Analyst Charles Komanoff has recalculated the numbers on a per driver basis. Congestion per driver rankings propel NY/NJ to 5^th place, tied with Boston and trailing only the big, traditional traffic disasters of Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington and Atlanta.

So drivers are right that congestion here is horrendous, even if one statistic says it’s worse in Austin. On the other hand, the prevalence of non-drivers here means congestion is not the problem for everyone TV news, the tabloids and 1010 WINS make it out to be (though how about a U.S. transit crowding comparison?).

Then again, many besides drivers are impacted by the noise, pollution and physical presence of traffic congestion.  Pedestrians, bicyclists, bus riders and city residents with traffic jams outside their windows all suffer from it.  In their cases, though, the enemy is not some generic “us,” as might be arguable in Nashville.