Does rush hour see a rush of emotions? Driver mood in conditions likely to exhibit congestion

Polls show that a large portion of the public considers traffic congestion to be a problem and believes a number of policy interventions would ameliorate it. However, most of the public rejects new taxes and fees to fund transportation system improvements or raise the cost of travel. This may be because of a disconnect between the public’s stated antipathy towards congestion and the recalled emotional costs congestion imposes. To explore this, we use a large and representative sample drawn from the American Time Use Survey to examine how drivers experience four emotions (happiness, sadness, stress, and fatigue), plus a constructed composite mood variable, when they travel in peak periods, in large metropolitan areas, in city centers, and in combinations of these. We also explore the interactions between these indicators and trip duration. We find evidence that drivers in the largest cities at the very peak of rush hour (5:00 pm–6:00 pm) on non-holiday weekdays are in a less positive mood, presumably because of congestion. However, this effect, though significant, is small, and we find no significant results using broader definitions of the peak period. In all, our findings suggest that congestion’s impact on drivers as a group is quite limited. This may help explain why the public’s attitude toward painful financial trade-offs to address congestion is lukewarm.