Texas cities where drivers get stuck at red lights the most

(NEXSTAR) – You know while you’re driving by means of city, and it feels such as you’re hitting each red gentle? Every. Single. One?

It’s not in your head, particularly when you stay in sure Texas cities. While we frequently consider site visitors being outlined by gridlocked highways and interstates, congestion on essential metropolis streets truly makes up 60% of site visitors delays in city areas, researchers at Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute discovered. They got down to rank U.S. cities by how typically drivers there are prone to hit red.

“American drivers share a common experience — and sometimes a common frustration — with traffic signals every day,” mentioned Luke Albert, an affiliate analysis engineer who labored on the study. “We’ve developed a way to compare those experiences from one city to another.”

The researchers appeared at 210,000 site visitors lights in 101 cities for per week in October 2020 as a way to decide a “Traffic Signal Efficiency Index” for every place. What does that quantity imply? It measures how more likely a driver is to return throughout a inexperienced gentle than they’re to drive as much as a red gentle.

The nationwide common for all the cities surveyed was 1.7, the report mentioned. That means the common driver is 1.7 occasions extra prone to hit a inexperienced gentle than a red gentle.

But many U.S. cities fell far beneath that common. In Fresno, California, where the researchers mentioned stoplights are performing worst, the rating was 1.1. Drivers there had about equal possibilities of hitting a red or inexperienced gentle.

On the different aspect of the spectrum, drivers in Boulder not often should hit the brakes. Their rating was 2.6, which means they see inexperienced lights at intersections 2.6 occasions as typically as red lights.

In Texas, many drivers have been stopped steadily at Corpus Christi, McAllen, and Brownsville. However, San Antonio gave Texas drivers the least quantity of stops in the state, rating as the 14th finest scoring metropolis in the nation.

The 15 cities that scored worst, where drivers hit red lights most steadily, have been:

1. Fresno, California
2. Corpus Christi, Texas
3. Jackson, Mississippi
4. McAllen, Texas
5. San Jose, California
6. Boston, Massachusetts
7. Wichita, Kansas
8. Riverside-San Bernardino, California
9. Worcester, Massachusetts
10. San Diego, California
11. Brownsville, Texas
12. Providence, Rhode Island
13. Tucson, Arizona
14. Las Vegas, Nevada
15. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

The 15 cities that carried out finest, where drivers have been much less prone to get stuck at red lights, have been:

1. Boulder, Colorado
2. Raleigh, North Carolina
3. Omaha, Nebraska
4. Jacksonville, Florida
5. Greensboro, North Carolina
6. St. Louis, Missouri
7. Denver-Aurora, Colorado
8. Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida
9. Detroit, Michigan
10. Virginia Beach, Virginia
11. Cape Coral, Florida
12. Cincinnati, Ohio
13. Orlando, Florida
14. San Antonio, Texas
15. Salem, Oregon

The researchers discovered that cities with extra stoplights typically scored higher than cities with fewer lights at intersections.

The examine additionally appeared at stoplight efficiency on the statewide stage. Nebraska, Wyoming, Alaska, Colorado, and North Carolina scored highest, whereas Massachusetts, Main, Nevada, New Hampshire and Rhode Island did worst.

They additionally famous the timeframe they studied might have impacted outcomes. For instance, cities in Louisiana have been coping with energy outages in the wake of Hurricane Delta in October 2020, which can have affected indicators at intersections.