Increased traffic is costing you time and money

SALT LAKE CITY — You’re likely spending more time in traffic compared to last year. A new survey compared travel times along the Wasatch Front and found that they’ve increased.

Traffic analytics company INRIX says for the average driver, it adds up to 23 hours in 2023.

That’s up from 19 hours just a year earlier.

INRIX transportation analyst Bob Pishue said you can thank population growth.

“If you have too many people trying to drive on a freeway at a certain time, that creates congestion … More people than the freeway is designed to accommodate,” he said.

Because time is money, Pishue said those 23 hours lost in congestion last year add up to $400.

That’s not the gas you’re burning through just sitting on I-15.

“We’ve … equated that to a dollar value, as far as lost time is concerned,” Pishue said. 

That’s money you could have been making on average if you weren’t just sitting in traffic, Pishue said.

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