These cities had the worst traffic in 2023
Few things are more frustrating than sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. You're late, you're stuck, and you're wasting time and gas. The average U.S. driver lost 42 hours to traffic delays in 2023, according to Inrix's latest Global Traffic Scorecard. While that's more than the average 40-hour workweek, it's a marked improvement from recent years. It's 18% lower than the 51 hours lost on average in 2022 and less than half of the 99 hours lost before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.
Still, trends across the country after the pandemic continue to contribute to congestion. Remote work has led to a longer stretch of high-traffic hours instead of the usual pre-9 a.m. and post-5 p.m. rush hour surges—and less predictable peaks at that. "On any given day, everybody might be going into the office and no one is expecting it," David Schrank, a senior research scientist at Texas A&M Transportation Institute, told The Hill in June 2024. "What if next Monday everybody gets called in? Then boom—it's gridlock." On top of that, truck-related congestion has increased with the continued rise of e-commerce and home delivery, with one truck equaling two to three cars on the road.
City planning plays a major role in managing traffic. Some have explored using tolls to unclog roadways. The famously congested arteries of New York City worsened post-pandemic with less space due to increased bike lanes and the rise of rideshare and outdoor dining. A $15 toll for daytime drivers heading into a portion of Manhattan was scheduled to go into effect in June 2024, aimed to reduce traffic by 17%. However, the plan was halted indefinitely amid competing political pressures to ease the sky-high cost of living. The notoriously congested Los Angeles is also considering congestion pricing, projecting to put a plan into practice by 2028. Though the City of Angels has a new mass transit system and is increasing bicycle lanes, its roads remain swollen.
To see where congestion is the biggest problem nationwide, Stacker ranked the 25 cities in the U.S. with the most time lost per driver due to congestion, according to data from Inrix. Stacker's analysis includes how much delays cost drivers based on median hourly wages in each metro area, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and comparisons to pre-COVID-19 pandemic hours lost, measured in 2019. Inrix calculated commute times by looking exclusively at the time it takes to get to and from major employment centers based on anonymized GPS data. Downtown speed is the speed at which a commuter should expect to travel 1 mile into the city's downtown or central business area during peak morning hours, and the first quarter of 2024 versus the first quarter of 2023 metric is the change in travel times during those two periods.
Read on to find out which city topped 100 hours lost on average per driver and how traffic patterns have started to take shape in 2024.
