These 5 Houston roads are among the worst for traffic in Texas

According to the report, factors that influenced the list’s ranking included, in no particular order, work-from-home conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, weather, economic growth, land use, construction and congestion outside the peak period.

The list covered over 2,264 miles of Greater Houston roads with an estimated total annual traffic delay of 121,238,851 hours for all drivers. Additionally, the wasted fuel due to congestion on Houston’s ranked roads amounted to 42,748,501 gallons of gasoline while the total “cost” of congestion (wasted time plus cost of fuel) registered more than $3 billion dollars.

According to David Shrank, a senior research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the data in the report is represented in a magnitude of all commuters instead of per-person analysis.

"We know how many cars went through there. We don’t know if it was the same car making a loop," Schrank said.

Shrank also said calculating the delay data is done by comparing speed data and traffic volume. For context, traffic volume is provided by the state department of transportation and tells the Institute how many cars are in a specific area.

"We work with average week of the year speeds meaning that we get a speed number for 7 a.m. Monday morning, 7:15 Monday morning, and 7:30 Monday morning," Shrank said. "And we then can sum up the vehicles and the speeds to get that delay for each of those 15 minutes of the average week."

The institute also used GPS systems from vehicles and GPS units on trucks to collect the delay data.