With respect to performance of the transportation system:

• The average annual delay per commuter rose from 32 hours in 1990 to 38 hours in 2011—a 19 percent increase. The total number of hours of delay experienced by all commuters across the Nation reached 5.5 billion hours in 2011—more than twice the 1990 total.
• Urban highway congestion cost the economy $121.2 billion in 2011, of which 22 percent, or $27 billion, was due to the effects of congestion on truck movements.
• On average in 2012, to allow for possible congestion, travelers in major metropolitan areas had to allow at least 40 percent more travel time to ensure 95 percent on-time arrival.
• While roadway congestion is still worse than it was in 1990, significant progress has been made since 2007.
• In 2012 scheduled maintenance and unexpected delays at inland waterway locks resulted in more than 150 thousand hours of lock shutdowns to traffic. This level of service interruptions was almost twice the level in 2000.
• Almost 20 percent of domestic flights in 2013, or more than one million flights, arrived at the gate more than 15 minutes late. More than 10 percent, or 126 thousand, of those delayed flights, or 2 percent of all flights, arrived at the gate more than 2 hours late.

FIGURE 5 Peak-Period Congestion on the National Highway System: 2011

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Freight Management and Operations, Freight Analysis Framework, version 3.4, 2013.