Our commutes worst in U.S.

Yes, we know rush hour traffic in the Tampa area is a nightmare.

We're aware that long lines of vehicles stretching toward the horizon at dawn and dusk every weekday is one of the ugliest vistas in this fair city.

But no matter how bad it gets, there must be other cities with worse commutes, right?

Wrong, according to a recent study by Forbes that ranks the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area dead last among 60 metropolitan areas surveyed for the best and worst commutes.

Travel time and delays in Tampa are worse than Miami (ranked 55), Los Angeles (51) and Atlanta (58), according to the study.

Salt Lake City, at No. 1, was deemed to have the most hassle-free commutes. Orlando was also close to the worst, at 57.

"It's unfortunate," David Armijo, CEO of the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority, said after reading the Forbes study. "It merits some discussion, and it's actually in line with discussions we've had in this region for years."

Mass transit controversial

Armijo was referring to plans to expand the area's mass transit system with light and high-speed rail. It's a polarizing issue that flares up at town hall meetings and in government chambers.

The proposal for a regional mass transit system got more traction - and criticism from some residents - when President Barack Obama visited Tampa in January to announce that Florida will receive $1.25 billion for a high-speed rail line that would connect the Tampa Bay area to Orlando, then later to Miami.

Another point of contention is a proposed 1-cent sales tax increase that could go before Hillsborough County voters in November. The task force that drafted the proposed penny increase recommends that 75 percent of the tax proceeds get funneled to light-rail construction and bus improvements.

The Forbes study will "help frame the issue" of mass transit in the Tampa Bay area, Armijo said.

But the analysis, published on Forbes.com, has to be looked at closely because it emphasized certain factors that might have worked against Tampa, said Philip Winters, a professor at the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research.

And congestion isn't necessarily a curse, Winters said.

"Parking and congestion is like a sign of a healthy economy," he said. "People are going places and doing things."

The study pulled data from the U.S. Census Bureau that calculated what percentage of motorists took an hour or more to get to work in the 60 metro areas. (The most recent year the figures were tallied for was 2008.)

Next, Forbes researchers used data compiled by the Texas Transportation Institute from 2007. That study compared rush hour commutes to trips taken when traffic was lighter.

Alternatives to driving

The Forbes study also looked for areas with the fewest vehicles on the road while factoring in the percentage of commuters who used mass public transportation, carpooled, biked or walked to get to work.

Forbes concluded that "many of the cities near the bottom of the list are in steamy Southeastern locales; the year-round swelter in these places may not be incidental to commuter unfriendliness. Pounding sun can make biking or walking to work impractical or impossible."

A community's size can affect travel delays, Winters added, so the data Forbes compiled about commute times could have also skewed the results for Tampa.

Buffalo, N.Y., according to Forbes, is "tightly packed," allowing commuters to get to work faster than in other major metro areas.

"Only 3 percent of its commuters spend more than an hour getting to work," the study said.

Hillsborough County covers 1,100 square miles, with neighborhoods sprawled throughout the county, and HART has 240 buses running 13 express routes, Amijo said.

"That's just not enough," he said. "Quite frankly, we're outmanned and outgunned."

While talks of mass transit improvements keep gaining momentum, officials with the Florida Department of Transportation and Hillsborough County say they continue to expand the capacity of local roadways to ease traffic flow.

Recent construction projects include State Road 60 near Tampa International Airport and ramps leading to and from Interstate 275, and the widening of I-275 from Himes Avenue to the Hillsborough River.

Improvements to U.S. 301 in southern Hillsborough, a county-funded project, will be complete by 2012. But construction to add more lanes from Gibsonton Drive to County Road 674 still causes frequent backups.

The communities listed in the Forbes report face different challenges to improve commute times because of geography, population and other factors, Winters said.

"No single option is going to be the solution for everybody," he said. "Giving people choices is the key."