Report: Traffic could be worse in Philly

As you’re sitting in traffic Monday morning, take solace: You could live in Chicago.

Well, maybe that came out wrong. What we mean is: If you lived in Chicago, you’d spend a whole lot more time contemplating the license plate in front of you during your daily ride.

In fact, you’d waste almost twice as much time if you lived in the worst-congested places: Chicago or L.A. Drivers there eat an extra 70 hours of fumes every year, nearly twice Philadelphia’s total of 39 hours.

That’s according to this year’s Urban Mobility Report, from the Texas Transportation Institute.

Among the 15 largest metro areas, only San Diego, Phoenix and Detroit have fewer hours lost to tie-ups.

We know what you Schuylkill Expressway drivers are thinking: This report must be on crack!

Well, we don’t pretend to understand the complicated modeling and surveying that must go into a report like this. Doing so would veer perilously close to math, which we don’t do.

But we presume the thing involves averages in some way. And, the fact is, it’s actually easy to get to Center City from a place many Pennsylvanians consider more foreign than Detroit: New Jersey.

How easy? Well, rumor has it that the Betsy in from New Jersey is frequently so deserted at rush hour that touch football games have broken. That’s unconfirmed, of course. Still, it must bring down the average for the region, no?

So, we suppose you could move to…well, never mind.