Why Does Tampa Traffic Seem Worse Than Usual?
It sucks when hurricane season collides with snowbird season. If your commute has doubled the past couple of weeks, you’re not alone. Tampa Bay residents are losing their minds at the amount of traffic that has caused most daily commutes to double in time. Some reasons made since after Hurricane Milton: roads were closed, out of state linemen and disaster relief vehicles, on top of the usual traffic influx. But now that we’re 2+ weeks post-storm, most out of state linemen are gone and people have returned from evacuating, so what’s the cause of all the insane traffic.
There are a lot of factors that are at play here. Many agree that snowbird season has started, which can be confirmed with the influx of out-of-state license plates around the area. But a lot is to blame from the hurricanes. Even though the linemen have gone back to their home state, more out of town contractors have taken their place.
On top of that, many people are currently displaced from their homes and are forced to take new routes. It was estimated that about 19,000 homes in Pinellas have flood damage, so a lot of those people are temporarily staying in Hillsborough while their homes are being inspected/repaired.
How Hurricane Milton Is STILL Affecting Tampa Traffic
It came from the internet, so take with a grain of salt. But a helpful Reddit user/”past transportation engineer” explained that all the stop light timings are still messed up from Milton. They believe that when they turned the intersections back on they didn’t have time to make sure timings worked. “This includes both making sure that the busy roads have more green time than the side roads and also that the intersections down stream from each other work in sync.”
The worst part is, it doesn’t seem to matter what time of day it is. You can almost guarantee to add at least an extra 20 minutes to your commute no matter where you’re coming from/going to.
