Five days a week, Shawna Smith makes the trip from Burnsville to her job as an office administrator at Tranquility Dental in St. Louis Park. And just about every day, she finds herself stuck in traffic.
Interstate 394 to Hwy. 100 can be really bad, she said. "It doesn't matter what time you go."
Bottlenecks are back. After traffic volumes dropped precipitously at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving freeways largely free-flowing as many stayed home, gridlock is once again part of the Twin Cities commuting experience.
Last year, Twin Cities drivers spent 26 hours stuck in snarls, nearly double the amount of time they spent sitting in traffic in 2021, according to the Seattle-based traffic analytics company INRIX, which recently released its 2022 Traffic Scorecard measuring the severity of congestion in more than 1,000 cities in 50 countries.
That's still not as bad as 2019, when metro area drivers spent the equivalent of more than two whole days — 52 hours — inching along, and the Twin Cities landed on INRIX's list of one of the top 25 bottlenecked cities in America. This year, the metro area checked in at No. 32.
But after two years of almost nonexistent congestion, commuters like Smith are encountering traffic jams more often, and at more untraditional times of day.
"We are seeing a lot more traffic in the middle of the day," said Tiffany Dagon, director of MnDOT's Regional Traffic Management Center in Roseville. "There has been a shifting in times."
Drivers are now less likely to encounter congestion during morning commutes — a time of day when traffic volumes have been slower to rebound since pandemic restrictions have eased. But traffic volumes have increased at night, extending evening rush hours beyond the typical 6 p.m. end time.
