LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- For more than one-third of Louisville commuters, getting to work now takes longer than 30 minutes.

Part One
Part Two

Traffic on Interstate 64 has doubled since 1990.

A lot of people believe all the transportation congestion problems here will go away as soon as the Ohio River bridges project is completed. But that's not going to be finished for at least 16 more years.

Even then, with projected traffic growth versus road supply and the rising cost of fuel, it appears we have a serious problem developing.

"If there is an accident, you're going to end up with major delays," said Metro Networks Traffic's Bobby Ellis, who has been monitoring Louisville traffic for 13 years. He knows the entire transportation grid can fail with just once accident, far away.

"It's an effect that kind of cascades out onto the other interstates because everybody's hooked together," he said.

If that's not enough, there are design flaws such as the point at which I-64 and I-71 merge together via a left-hand exit to try to cross the Kennedy Bridge.

What engineer thought that was a good idea?

"I don't know the answer to that. It's not a very good design, the curve's tight," said Chief District Engineer Matt Bullock. "Obviously, if we did it again, it wouldn't be there."

In an attempt to measure how traffic congestion affects us, Target 32 spent the last month logging drive times on specific rush hour routes.

A 22-minute drive on a good day from Bullitt County using I-65 took an average of 30 minutes. That's a weekly round-trip delay of one hour and 15 minutes.

A congestion-free 20-minute drive from Oldham County on I-71 sometimes took 50 minutes, but averaged 30 minutes for an average weekly delay of 1:40.

A 17-minute drive on a good day between Middletown and downtown Louisville on I-64 averaged 31 minutes. That's an average delay each week of 1:10 one way -- or 2:20 total.

Multiply that out over a year and it comes to 121 hours lost in delays. That's five whole days, or three 40-hour work weeks.

The 2007 Urban Mobility Report ranked Louisville third-worst in the nation among mid-sized cities for travel delays. It found the average traveler sits in Louisville traffic 42 extra hours each year.

"With a user cost of $14-$15 per user per hour, that adds up to $500 to $1,000 range per person per year, so it's a significant cost," Bullock said.

The total congestion cost of travel delays in Louisville each year: $395 million in excess fuel consumed.

Even if the new Ohio River bridges get built on schedule, traffic growth takes its toll: While 96,000 vehicles used to cross the Kennedy Bridge every day in 1990, the total is up to 137,000 this year, and is projected to hit 160,000 per day by 2025.

What were 51,000 vehicles per day in 1990 on the Sherman Minton Bridge will be up to 111,000 by 2025 -- even with completion of the new bridges.

"It's a symptom of poor planning, a symptom of lack of transportation options," said Leslie Barras of River Fields. "We don't have the best bus system. We've made the decision, and this can be reversed, to put light rail on the back burner. So there's really no other option for most folks but to get in their cars and get on the road and then everybody gets stuck in the same place trying to reach their destination."

"Literally, the dollars aren't there. And as you talk to our transit folks, they're concerned about how they'll pay the fuel, for 60,000 people a day counting on the bus systems, yet Washington's not sending the money to cover the expansion of the fuel, which is a significant problem for future growth," said Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson.