Cars now outnumber drivers in the United States and congestion on the roads is one of the country's greatest headaches. Robert Tanner reports that researchers estimate the time lost annually by motorists due to traffic delays is a staggering 3.7 billion hours

　　Every day, millions of American commuters have to deal with more cars being on the road than ever before and endure longer traffic hold-ups and an epidemic of road congestion that's spread far beyond big cities.

　　Clogged streets have become a headache in once-quiet places such as Charleston, South Carolina and Omaha, Nebraska.

　　Disagreement over what to do about the problem - and a lack of money and political will either expand roads dramatically or radically change the way the nation gets around - means Americans are stuck with traffic just as much as they're stuck in it.

　　Estimates of the waste caused by the situation are boggling.

　　According to the Texas Transportation Institute, the field's leading research group, time lost to traffic delays in 2003 hit 3.7 billion hours. Add that up, and it equals more than 400,000 years. That's a time-span that would stretch back pre-car and pre-civilization to the days when scientists believe homo sapiens was just starting to appear.

　　Fuel lost to traffic jams in 2003 could fill every car in the United States or six days of driving. That becomes even more costly now with gas at more than US$2 a gallon (3.8 liters).

　　That old idea of rush hour? Now it's closer to a rush day. Roads are congested 7.1 hours every day, on average, in cities across the country. In a small town like Allentown in Pennsylvania (population 106,000) alone, the number of cars on the main road on a busy day practically equals the city's entire population, according to Mike Kaiser, executive director of the local town planning commission.

　　Still, numbers are awfully abstract to a driver who just lost 10 minutes of his or her day crawling through a traffic jam. To that motorist, the costs are very personal.

　　It means leaving home earlier to make sure one is not late for work, missing family events, putting off errands until the weekend. Add rushing, worry and frustration and you get stress and all the detrimental health effects it - and sitting longer in your car - can bring.

　　"It's definitely getting worse. It shocks me some days when I have to leave work, go to one location and then go home, and realize I just drove 60 miles (100 kilometers) and didn't really go anywhere," says Mike Reymann, a 38-year-old bank vice-president in Minneapolis. "Suddenly, you're like, 'My God, I was just in the car for an hour-and-a-half'!"

　　Over the years, it's become harder to move someplace where the traffic isn't grim.

　　Five metropolitan areas were gridlocked so badly in the 1980s that the average driver experienced at least 20 hours of delay a year, according to the Texas institute.

　　By 2003, that number had exploded tenfold - to 51 metropolitan areas.

　　In the United States today, cars outnumber licensed drivers by 204 million to 191 million. Road-building hasn't kept up with the number of cars and neither has the traditional source of funding for roads.

　　The federal gas tax brings in less per kilometer traveled because improving gas mileage over the past 30 years - though slowed with the rise of SUVs - means each tax dollar has to cover more wear, tear and repair.

　　"It's kind of like getting up and eating breakfast - I'm going to get up and sit in traffic. You plan your life around it," says Elizabeth Adams, 28, a marketer for an Atlanta hospital. "It's kind of your fate and accept it."

　　Solutions are elusive because each proposal must win support from a seemingly impossible-to-please group of competing interests. Road builders and motorist groups want more asphalt, environmentalists want more mass transit. Highway and transit projects would eat up scarce and expensive land and taxpayers don't want to pay.

　　"There are some things you can do to slow down the situation getting worse but I don't think there's anything you can do to get rid of it," says Anthony Downs, a traffic expert at the Brookings Institution. "It's part of being alive in a modern metropolitan area."

　　Like water, traffic just fills up the space available, swallowing new road capacity very soon after it's built. Downs describes it as a frustrating dynamic which he calls "triple convergence."

　　Open new lanes on a crowded highway and drivers will swoop in to take advantage - altering their times and routes, and even dumping alternatives like bus or rail they've already chosen, he says.

　　The history of traffic seems to bear out his view.

　　The interstate highway system, launched in 1956, was supposed to be about moving goods, commerce and even soldiers long distances. The system did that, but commuters caught on too and traffic boomed. Beltways - the highways that circle cities including Washington DC, and Columbus, Ohio - are among the worst traffic offenders.

　　Many other attempts to ease the problem haven't fulfilled the hopes of their proponents. Car pool lanes? Underused. New rail lines? Not enough people have proven willing to leave their cars.

　　"We've always looked for the quick fix - that you can build your way out of congestion. That all we need is more money. Or that simply building new transit systems or monorails will solve all the problems," says Michael Replogle, transportation director with the group Environmental Defense.

　　"There are no magic solutions," he says.

　　One idea that's beginning to catch on in many metropolitan areas is peak-hour road pricing - a flexible fee for a few lanes on commuter highways, with tolls higher when traffic is heavier. Drivers can get a fast ride but they must pay for it and prices in some versions can be as high as US$8.

　　Other steps that various advocates say have slowed congestion's growth include quicker accident-clearing; better mass transit networks with higher-density housing around transit stops to discourage sprawl; more roads to match population growth; and businesses that don't subsidize employee parking costs so that alternatives to driving look better financially.

　　Road builders and motorist associations say roads haven't kept up with our driving habits. Since 1980, the US population grew 28 percent, while registered vehicles grew by 48.5 percent and the best gauge of road use - vehicle-miles traveled - soared 89.3 percent. But road capacity? It grew 5 percent, according to the American Road and Transportation Builder's Association.

　　"We are vastly under-investing in our highway network," says Pat Jones, executive director of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, which supports greater use of tolls. "If we continue down the path we're on now, the congestion will get worse and worse and worse at a faster rate."

　　(The Associated Press)