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Hartford Scores

City Makes List Of Country's 10 Best Cities For Commuters

Staff Report

March 03, 2011

Lots of people talk about traffic woes in Hartford, and it can famously back up when repair crews set up shop. But Kiplinger's has named the state's capital one of the "10 Best Cities for Commuters."

The listing was open to metro areas with at least 1 million people, and most were on the smaller side, with fewer than 2 million. Hartford ranked No 10, barely beating out Sacramento, the California capital.

"The city offers a free downtown circulator bus service called the Star Shuttle. There are 45 parking garages downtown, some of which are free, and lots of on--street parking," the report said.

Everything is relative in parking and traffic. Tops on the list was Rochester, N.Y., followed by Columbus, Ohio and Providence.

Kiplinger's report is based on the average time of commutes, gasoline prices, delays over the course of a full year and public transit. It's based in part on the annual Urban Mobility Report, which says Hartford is middle-of-the-pack among a larger sample of metro areas, in annual delay per driver (51st out of 101), in rush-hour delay (49th) and in congestion cost ($541 per year per driver, 55th).

Most of the cities on the list have struggling economies, but not Richmond, Va., or Columbus, Ohio, whose metro area unemployment rates were just 7.3 and 7.8 percent respectively in December. Rochester's rate was 7.8 percent; Hartford's was 8.7 percent.