DFW keeps building roads, but traffic gets worse. Here are Tarrant’s most clogged roads

It would take a resilient driver about 64 hours and unhealthy doses of caffeine to drive straight from Fort Worth to Anchorage, Alaska. The average Dallas-Fort Worth commuter spent roughly the same amount of time sitting in traffic in 2022.

Metroplex commuters collectively wasted away approximately 217 million hours (or 24,784 years) of their life waiting out delays that year, according to tallies computed by Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute. A committed pedestrian could make about 200,281 trips between Boston and San Francisco in that time.

Road congestion in Dallas-Fort Worth ( and much of the nation ) has steadily — almost relentlessly — worsened since the early 1980s. Researchers estimate the average Metroplex driver wasted 36 hours of their life trudging through traffic in 1982.

The fiscal and environmental cost of clogging has risen too. Commuters burned 85.43 million gallons of excess fuel idling on roadways in 2022, four times the amount of wasted gasoline shot into the atmosphere four decades ago. The squandered gas, and the time spent at standstills, costs travelers a cumulative $5.78 billion (roughly $1,523 per person), almost 12 times more than the 1982 bill.

Worsening traffic has some obvious culprits.

“The population growth of our metros speak for themselves,” said David Schrank, a senior researcher at the institute. “Dallas-Fort Worth has really been growing leaps and bounds, especially in the last decade.”

The Metroplex’s population topped 8 million between 2022 and 2023; the region has absorbed 434,000 new residents since 2020. More opportunities attract more people, more people bring more cars , and more cars generate more gridlock .

State and local authorities have typically coped with the population swells with a familiar, seemingly straightforward solution: building new roads, and expanding existing ones.

The Texas Department of Transportation has invested billions over recent decades ramping up the region’s highway infrastructure. But adding lanes appears to have done little to lessen bottlenecks.

For other experts, this comes as little surprise.

“You can’t build your way out of congestion,” said Kara Kockelman, a transportation engineer and professor at UT Austin, repeating a mantra now accepted as law by many of her peers.

Enlarging a crowded freeway can offer some short-term respite. But larger, brisker roads lure in more vehicles. New lanes quickly fill up , and jams return — often at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and the dislocation of communities. Transportation wonks spot this reflex — called “induced demand” — nationwide.

“Houston and Dallas have not built their way out of congestion,” Kockelman said. “They’ve just inspired more and more sprawl.”

Schrank challenges that narrative.

“I would not describe it as induced demand. It is new demand,” he said. “Population has doubled in that 40 years, so these people show up in town and need to travel.”

For the majority of families settling in scattered , suburban subdivisions, there are few other ways to get around. Public transportation — especially in Tarrant County — is slow and scarce .

Designing communities around automobile travel, Kockelman points out, is a choice. Building denser housing can lay fertile ground for more cost-effective and environmentally friendly forms of transportation, like buses, trains and bikes. Taxing gas and more strictly pricing upswings in highway use, she added, can discourage car travel (and, in turn, ease congestion).

Schrank considers public transit options helpful instruments in a “toolbox” policy solutions to the state’s immobility. Fort Worth, for its part, has pledged to explore them .

“Most of the south and west grew up around the car,” Schrank said. “It’s going to be hard to retrofit some of those areas, because they don’t have the density yet.”

Here are Tarrant County’s most congested stretches of road

1. Interstate 35W/U.S. 287 from Texas 183 to Interstate 30 : The 3.37-mile stretch of road, the state’s ninth most clogged, wastes just over 732,000 commuter hours every year, costing drivers $67 million in squandered gas and lost time. Vehicles unlucky enough to squeeze through the channel at peak hours can expect to take 19 minutes longer to get to their destination. Once close to breaking into the state’s top five most crowded roads, it fell three spots between 2022 and 2023.

2. Loop 820 from Interstate 35W to Baker Boulevard/Texas 183 : Commuters throw away an estimated $83.2 million and around 470,000 hours crawling through traffic along this 6.72-mile section of freeway. It’s Texas’ 18th most congested road, rising five places between 2022 and 2023. Peak traffic adds roughly 16 minutes to a voyage.

3. Interstate 35W from Texas 170 to U.S. 287 : Congestion along this roughly 5 mile corridor cutting through Alliance has improved bounds since 2021. Still the state’s 35th most congested road, the stretch delays commuters for a cumulative 299,000 hours every year, at a cost of $43.5 million. Hitting the road at rush hour can add up to 22 minutes to a trip.

4. Texas 121 from Texas 26 to Loop 820 : This 12.6-mile stretch twisting through the county’s northeast, meanwhile, has surged 26 spots in the state’s road congestion rankings since 2021. Commuters waste 257,000 hours and an estimated $84.3 million idling through the road; peak traffic adds 12 minutes to a trip.

5. Interstate 30 from Loop 820 to Texas 360 : Now Texas’ 60th most clogged road (after ranking 93rd three years ago), this 8.78-mile section of I-30 delays commuters for 188,226 hours at the expense of $43.3 million.