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Found out 40% of my morning commute time is just from idling at red lights
I live in Austin and track my drives with a GPS logger for work. Last week I looked at the data from the past 3 months and found that 40% of my commute time is just sitting at red lights. That's 12 minutes a day wasted doing nothing. I started taking side streets with stop signs instead and cut 8 minutes off my trip. Has anyone else mapped their commute and found something similar?
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finleym4310d ago
40% of my commute time is just sitting at red lights" - that stat hit me hard. I used to think side streets would be slower because of all the stop signs and traffic. But after reading this I actually tried it on my own drive and you're totally right. The stop signs let me roll through when it's clear instead of sitting there staring at a light. Cut almost 10 minutes off my 30 minute drive. Never would have believed it before seeing someone else's data on it.
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the_holly10d ago
That stat hit me hard" yeah I felt that too when I first saw it. I actually tried something similar but I went the opposite direction and started taking the longest way possible just to avoid red lights and ended up adding like 5 minutes somehow. Traffic is weird like that sometimes.
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carter.gavin10d ago
Pull up the data on your stop sign route vs the light route and compare how many times you actually had to come to a full stop. I bet the number of stops is way lower even though the distance might be longer. That's the real killer with lights, you stop even when nobody's coming. My buddy did this in Denver and found he was hitting 18 lights per trip but only 4 of them actually had cross traffic.
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