Historical Freeway Travel Times

Use the menus below to review historical travel times on Houston area freeways. The travel times are generated using data from the Houston TranStar Traffic Monitoring System. The data was collected during a full year's worth of weekdays. Select a year to view travel times from. Locations are approximate.
Traffic
Year 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011

2020 Highlights

  • The reduction in traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in reduced travel times and travel delay across all freeways in the Houston region when compared to 2019.
  • Overall, travel delay per mile was reduced by 65% in the morning and 60% in the afternoon versus 2019.
  • As of January 2021, average speeds are still well above their typical values on most freeways. This chart shows the average monthly weekday speeds from 6 AM to 9 AM on I-10 Katy Inbound. The trends shown in this chart, where speeds begin increasing in March and remain that way for rest of the year, are fairly typical of all freeways in the Houston region.
  • Here are the freeway sections with the most dramatic reductions in delay.
    • SH-288SH-288 Inbound from SH-6 to Downtown in the morning – Average delay reduced by 7 minutes.
    • IH-45I-45 North Inbound from Beltway 8 to Downtown in the morning – Average delay reduced by almost 8 minutes.
    • IH-45I-45 Gulf Inbound from Beltway 8 to Downtown in the morning – Average delay reduced by almost 8 minutes.
    • IH-69 I-69 Southwest Outbound from Downtown to IH-610 West Loop in the afternoon – Average delay reduced by 8 minutes.
    • IH-610I-610 Northbound from Stella Link to Shepherd in the afternoon – Average delay reduced by over 11 minutes.
  • I-45 Gulf Inbound from Beltway 8 to Downtown went from being congested almost half the day in 2019 to virtually no congestion in 2020.
  • Despite the overall reductions, the I-610 West Loop is still congested over 40% of the afternoon in both directions between Stella Link and Shepherd. I-69 Southwest between Downtown and the I-610 West Loop is also congested 60-70% of the afternoon and results in an average of 1.5 minutes of delay per mile per traveler.
  • See the full data summary here.

2019 Highlights

  • Overall, freeway congestion levels remained relatively similar to 2018 with some exceptions.
  • With construction beginning to wrap up, congestion on US-290 was reduced dramatically. Travel delay was reduced by almost 5 minutes during the morning commute and over 7 minutes during the afternoon commute compared to 2018. Since 2015, the delay on US-290 inbound during the morning commute has been reduced from over 17 minutes to less than 2 minutes. Overall, 290 was congested 20% less time than it was in 2018.
  • I-69/US-59 Southwest inbound between the I-610 West Loop and Downtown is congested for most of the day. The outbound direction is congested 75% of the time between noon and 8 pm which is 21% higher than 2018. This segment of roadway showed the largest increase in congested time over 2018.
  • On average, the traffic is heaviest from 7 AM to 8 AM in the morning and from 5 PM to 6 PM in the evenings.
  • See the full data summary here.