Congested Development A Study of Traffic Delays, Access, and Economic Activity in Metropolitan Los Angeles
For years Los Angeles has been ranked among the most traffic congested metropolitan areas in the U.S., often the most congested. The Texas Transportation Institute estimated that traffic congestion cost the LA economy a staggering $13.3 billion in 2014. But do such measures really capture how congestion and the conditions that give rise to it affect regional economies? This study explores this question for metropolitan Los Angeles by examining how traffic congestion is (i) related to a broader and more conceptually powerful concept of access and (ii) how it affects key industries, which are critical to the performance of the region’s economy. Our analysis shows that more often than not in Los Angeles, the time lost to commuter traffic delays is off-set by the greater opportunities to reach destinations over shorter distances to which high development densities gives rise.
