The Tipping Point: What COVID-19 Travel Reduction Tells Us About Effective Congestion Relief

The Tipping Point – What COVID-19 Travel Reduction Tells Us About Effective Congestion Relief uses observed data collected before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Twin Cities metropolitan area to answer a question with important implications for highway investment planning and travel demand management: At what level of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) does congestion significantly decline or disappear? The study pursues this question through a series of statistical analyses identifying inflection points in the relationship between regional VMT and congestion. The study also looks at the relationship between VMT and congestion at the corridor level to assess the sensitivity of congestion on specific roadways to changes in travel demand. This analysis categorizes Twin Cities freeways based on congestion frequency, highlighting the corridors expected to become congestion free as VMT declines and the corridors expected to remain congested. The full report is available from the Minnesota DOT web site at https://www.dot.state.mn.us/research/reports/2022/202209.pdf