Before the pandemic, the average U.S. driver spent 97 hours stuck in traffic each year. That’s nearly two-and-a-half work weeks, at an estimated cost of nearly $87 billion, or $1,348 per driver. But even America’s most congested city (Boston, 164 annual hours in traffic) paled in comparison to global leader, Moscow (210 hours). In 2021, the average U.S. driver lost just 36 hours due to traffic, well below pre-pandemic levels, but that figure is trending back up again as more workplaces open and commutes return.

History is filled with traffic horror stories. After a 20-mile parking lot leading up to the famous Woodstock music festival in 1969, most motorist abandoned their cars and walked. A snowstorm outside of Moscow in 2012 buried the highway, and its stalled vehicles, for 3 days. And one 62-mile-long traffic jam in Beijing in 2010 lasted an incredible 12 days!

Traffic can have a number of causes, from accidents and construction to overcapacity, but often so-called “phantom traffic jams” simply emerge from the collective flow of vehicles on a roadway through a wave of false stops and starts. Networked self-driving cars may eventually prevent this phenomenon, but until then, the best advice that MIT congestion expert Berthold Horn, who studies how densely packed birds and bats fly together, can give to drivers is: don’t tailgate.

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Traffic in some form has accompanied urban living for centuries. G.A. Sekon, editor of Railway Magazine, once described a whole different kind of congestion in London during Victorian times:

The big army of pedestrians twice daily set out on the march… at each street corner more travelers augmented the marching throng. The same scene was enacted morning after morning on all the trunk roads that led to the city. The bridges [across the Thames] were crowded to an extent that is scarcely believable.’

The industrialist Henry Ford’s success at creating a cheap, affordable automobile helped democratize transportation but it also produced a quantum leap in transport that caught city planners, regulators and policymakers by surprise. A luxury item for the well-to-do adventurer became an essential mode of transport that polluted and congested cities, and also extended their perimeters, creating the sprawl of suburbs and commuters we experience today.

Commute times and traffic volume may have been reduced during the past two years, but it has actually been more dangerous to be on the road with fewer cars (driving at faster speeds). The traffic fatality rate in the U.S. was 1.37 per 100 million miles traveled in 2020, a 23 percent increase from 2019.

Surprisingly, according to one study of social media posts, Hawaii is the state with the most road rage among its drivers, 5,872 posts per 100,000 drivers, compared to runner-up California (3,506 posts). Chalk it up to too few highways and year-round tourists, or just locales where people are more likely to share their escapades and frustrations?

A Detroit policeman named William Potts invented the tri-color traffic light system at intersections in 1920, introducing the yellow light as an indicator that the light would change soon.

Studies suggest that roundabouts, or circular intersections, not only save drivers time but are also much safer. Roundabouts remain much more common in Europe than the U.S. The U.K., for example, has one roundabout every 3.6 square miles, and France, one per every 8.3 square miles, while the U.S. has just one for every 1,300 square miles.

One of the most successful traffic-reduction schemes (under consideration by New York) is congestion pricing, a tax paid for entering certain city zones and already used in cities like London and Singapore to reduce both traffic and emissions. Singapore’s system even charges vehicles different rates for different desired speeds. But critics like Ramsi Woodcock, a University of Kentucky law professor, argue that congestion charges disproportionately impact poor and middle-class drivers, forcing them to find alternative modes of transport while city roads are reserved for the wealthy.

Many existing traffic-reduction measures could be expanded further, from carpooling and bike lanes to investing in public transit and bike-sharing stations. New technology and data analytics approaches are being employed everywhere from Germany to India and could also help. For example, using artificial intelligence to optimize traffic lights and waiting times at intersections or to develop algorithms that will learn how to predict changes in traffic levels.

Many are hoping that autonomous vehicles will be the magic bullet for solving traffic jams in the future. But some experts are worried that self-driving cars might make things worse, especially in the short-run, if passengers resist sharing their vehicles or those vehicles make numerous rides without passengers. Emboldened pedestrians and cyclists may also take advantage of a robot car’s safety features, leading to further stoppages.

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Thanks to the video restoration work of NASS on YouTube, you can time travel to the streets of Manhattan in 1945 and experience the sights, sounds, and, yes, reduced traffic…