Study: I-405 Through Bellevue Among Worst Afternoon Commutes in America

Everybody on the Eastside knows Interstate 405 southbound through Bellevue is slow-going every weekeday afternoon. Now a study by The Texas A&M University documents that fact.

According to a study by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M, the southbound Interstate 405 corridor from Coal Creek Parkway to State Route 520 is the 21st worst afternoon commute out of 328 corridors measured throughout the United States. That stretch is the worst afternoon commute in the Seattle area, according to the study.

The top 10 in this category include seven Los Angeles freeways, two corridors in San Francisco and one in Austin.

That ranking is based on the amount of delay -- measured in annual person-hours spent per mile on the 4.5 mile stretch of freeway between 3 and 7 p.m. on the weekdays. The study concluded that people wasted a combined total of 304,000 hours annually on that stretch of road (that's the measure of all time spent by all commuters on that stretch of road over the weekday afternoon commute).

However, it is far from the costliest, in terms of wasted fuel -- 66th in the nation--  or congestion costs -- only $297 million a year, which is 69th in the nation.

According to the study's authors, the ranking is the first nationwide effort to identify reliability problems at specific stretches of highway responsible for significant traffic congestion at different times and different days.

The full study has been posted to this article, and you can check out the corridor study at the Texas Transprtation Institute.