traffic

2012-04-22: Macquarie Atlas (MQA) reports traffic up slightly on the Indiana Toll Road and Dulles Greenway but down on the Chicago Skyway in the first quarter compared to 2011Q1. The changes were all small - up 1.8% on the ITR, down 0.7% on the Skyway and up 0.8% on the Dulles Greenway.

They comment that traffic on the MWAA Dulles Toll Road on the eastern end of the Greenway was off 1.1%.

Tollers on the eleven crossings on the NY-MI borders with Canada report traffic in March was 3.07m vs 2.93m in March 2011, a rise of 4.9%. Trucks were down a bit 597k vs 609k March last year, so strength was cars 2.46m vs 2.31m 6.7% up.

Numbers are compiled by the Public Border Operators Association (PBOA) which comprise owners of the ten international bridges and one tunnel.

Car traffic between the US and Canada was up a healthy 6.6% in 2011, growing to 30.3m from 28.4m in 2010, but truck traffic at 6.7m was flat.  Overall traffic was up 5.3% to 37.14m from 35.26m - all numbers here are the eleven toll crossings as compiled by the Public Border Operators Association.  

Growth in traffic can no longer be assured many places in the US. The San Francisco Bay area is an example. We've gone through ten years of the traffic data. Five of the seven Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) bridges have been seeing traffic recently below a peak year. Overall the seven bridges total traffic is down 3.8% on the peak back in 2004.

Traffic on urban arterials in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia is currently down about 2% on the year-ago numbers according to FHWA's Office of Highway Policy Information. That knocks out last year's 1% recovery. Toll facilities in the area - Baltimore tunnels and bridges, the two Dulles area tollroads are more or less tracking that decline.

Traffic on the Ambassador Bridge continued weak in September at 603.1k, down 3% on the 618.7k of the same month last year but up a tad on the 582.3k of 2009 and the 594.7k of Sept 2008. Back in the year 2000 the September count at the Ambassador was over a million.

Fitch Ratings say in a recent report that traffic on toll facilities ceased to grow in the second quarter of this year, suggesting the weak recovery from the 2008-2009 recession in 2010 and first quarter 2011 has stalled. An accompanying graph shows 4/11 traffic and revenue as still growing but at 2 to 3% versus a healthy revenue growth 5% year-on-year -  rather constant for a year through the first quarter.

Request for Proposals (RFP) 5001572

INVESTMENT GRADE TRAFFIC AND REVENUE STUDY

Maryland's beautiful new Inter County Connector a multibillion dollar 6 lane, all-electronic toll road carried a paltry 8,500 vehicles yesterday on its first day of tolling, the kind of count you get on a remote 2-lane road in rural West Virginia.

The parallel stretch of the Beltway and nearby I-270 would have each carried well over 200k

The first week of the first segment of the MD/ICC with toll-free operations saw 216k trips. The opening day apparently saw some one-time curiosity drivers because it got 36k. Since then there has been an average 30k vehicles/day [(216-36)/6]. Tolls begin after midnight this Sunday or 12:01am Monday Mar 7.