If rush hour traffic in Columbus seems bad, then perhaps it will make you feel a bit better to know that it’s literally worse just about everywhere else. According to new study from Trulia.com, Columbus ranks second in the country for best commute times, only trailing behind Buffalo, New York.
“Residents of Columbus get an extra 55.9 hours of leisure time yearly compared to residents of New York City who spend 12.9 minutes longer commuting on a daily basis,” said Sue Weaver, Marketing Outreach Lead at Trulia.
Of course, the positive score doesn’t mean that commutes in Columbus have gotten any shorter in recent years. Commute times all across the US have steadily increased since 2009, and are expected to continue to climb locally with Columbus projecting to add 500,000 new residents and 300,000 new jobs to the region between 2015 and 2050.
Transit Columbus Board Chair Elissa Schneider said that the low commute times shouldn’t detract from efforts to build mass transit solutions for the future.
“A shorter commute makes it easy for community leaders to ignore the need for more mass transit options, but the problem is, the Columbus landscape is changing, its people are changing, and its generations are changing,” she stated. “If you look at our future as a growing city and still ignore the need for mass transit — well, that’s just silly.”
For more information on the new report, visit www.trulia.com.