Southbound traffic on South Broadway Avenue at the intersection of Grande Boulevard. (Santana Wood/Tyler Morning Telegraph File)

A busy stretch of Broadway Avenue in Tyler is one of the top 50 congested roadways in the state, according to a recent study.

Coming in at No. 47, South Broadway Avenue, or U.S. 69, between W. Southwest Loop 323 and Toll 49 landed a spot on the Top 100 Most Congested Roadways in the state in a study performed by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI).

Among the top five on the list are roadways in large metros such as Houston, Dallas and Austin.

For Tylerities, seeing the heavily-traveled East Texas roadway on the list comes as no surprise. This isn’t the first year the roadway has made the list, and the traffic woes are a complaint shared by many who drive within the city limits.

Cameron Williams, traffic engineer for the City of Tyler, said results of the study were expected.

“It does not necessarily surprise us,” Williams said. “Tyler continues to grow and S. Broadway continues to be a heavily traveled and economically important corridor for the city and region.”

The corridor received the same ranking last year, according to TTI, and has been in the top 100 for multiple years. In 2015, it ranked No. 150, then up to 105 in 2016, and up to No. 67 in 2017, only inching closer toward the top since then.

Peak travel times

According to the TTI study, 5 p.m. is the worst time to travel southbound on South Broadway. If you’re headed northbound, 4:15 p.m. is the busiest time where drivers experience the most delays. A driver is typically traveling about 25 mph during this peak time frame, according to the study.

Overall, the roadway experiences north and southbound congestion between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., with the most delays occurring during the lunch hour and after-work travel period.

Daily volume for the roadway is high, with an average of 41,435 vehicles traveling this strip on any given day, according to the study.

Time is money

Researchers note that traffic delays impose an immense financial burden. Those costs – a result of lost time and wasted fuel – totaled more than $3.8 billion on the state’s 100 most traffic-choked road sections during 2021, about 10 percent lower than pre-pandemic levels.

In Tyler, the congestion cost for this strip of Broadway totals more than $18.9 million per year.

Traffic can throw a wrench into travel plans, including how early you need to leave the house. Based on a 20-minute trip in light traffic, the study showed congestion adds at least six minutes to a trip, eight minutes in the peak direction, and 11 minutes to overall trip planning.

In total, the report found that drivers were delayed 184,898 hours per mile over the last year.

‘Not just a big-city problem’

Although the worst stretches are concentrated in Texas’ biggest population centers, gridlock affects areas of all sizes, as illustrated by TTI’s complete list of 1,860 road segments in 23 urban regions across the state.

Researchers say growth is what continues to put higher demand on state roadways.

“Traffic congestion isn’t just a big-city problem, and that problem is almost sure to get worse as our population surges by almost 20 million in the next 25 years,” said David Schrank, TTI’s lead researcher on the annual study. “With that kind of growth, Texas needs to use every possible means to keep people and goods moving. We need to add capacity, operate the system efficiently, and give people options for how to travel.”

City of Tyler works to improve traffic conditions

Although Broadway isn’t a city street, the traffic signals along the road fall within the traffic department’s jurisdiction. Williams said the city has ongoing efforts to improve traffic flow in the city, including on Broadway Avenue, and has completed some projects as well.

In 2019, signal timing improvements were implemented on S. Broadway from Chimney Rock Drive/Donnybrook Avenue to Loop 323, Williams said. In the fall of 2021, signal timing improvements were implemented on S. Broadway from Market Square Boulevard to Grande Boulevard.

“These latter signal timing improvements likely only impacted the later part of the 2021 congestion analyses of the TTI study,” Williams said.

Also in November/December 2021, new controllers, communication devices, and vehicle detection equipment were installed on S. Broadway from Market Square to Loop 323 in order to improve operations, reliability, and responsiveness to the corridor, Williams said.

There aren’t currently any other traffic signal improvements programmed that are likely to improve traffic flow on Broadway Avenue, Williams said.

“However, the Texas Department of Transportation is working on roadway widening projects on Old Jacksonville Highway (FM 2493), Paluxy Drive (FM 756), and Rhones Quarter Rd (FM 2964). All of these roadways are parallel routes,” Williams explained. “By increasing capacity on these roadways, it will provide motorists alternative routes into and out of Tyler and work to reduce congestion on Broadway Avenue.”

TxDOT is also currently working on schematic plans for S. Broadway from South Town Drive to FM 2813/Marsh Farm Road, according to Williams.

“One of the major goals of that project is to increase capacity and operational efficiency on the corridor,” he said.

Williams said along with efforts to improve congestion, the city is focused on improving overall safety of the road. There is a project in the works that will replace the existing traffic signal at Broadway Avenue and Robert E Lee Drive.

“It is not anticipated that this will improve congestion in the area but it will provide for improved pedestrian facility and traffic safety on the corridor,” he said.

What is the purpose of the TTI study?

In response to increased roadway congestion throughout the state, in 2009 the Texas Legislature mandated that TxDOT annually produce a ranked list of the most congested roadways in the state to help focus attention on some of the worst bottlenecks in the state.

The review of the state’s most crowded street and highway segments – 1,860 roadways in all – measures traffic congestion by determining delay per mile of travel – how much longer it takes for motorists to travel on a gridlocked road than to make the same trip in uncongested conditions.

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The analysis, funded by TxDOT, noted little change in rankings from 2020 to 2021. Eight of the 10 most overcrowded road sections have stayed in the top 10 for the last three years, according to TTI.

For answers to frequently asked questions and more details about each of the 100 congested roadways, visit https://mobility.tamu.edu/texas-most-congested-roadways.