These Are the US Cities Where Drivers Spend the Most Time in Traffic

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When it comes to traffic jams, drivers can be divided into several categories. Maybe you are the one who sends reports to your mapping service provider in good faith. Maybe you are actively trying to use driving strategies that make driving less likely for other people. Maybe your worries aren’t so much about being late to your destination, but about keeping your kids busy during that extra time in the car. However, there is one reaction to traffic that is universal: we all don’t like it.

If you really hate traffic, you might even consider moving to another location where there is less traffic overall. Let’s look at data from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and INRIX to find out which cities have the worst traffic, which can help you make an important move decision or just take comfort that someone else in some other city is worse off than you. .

Which cities have the biggest traffic delays?

The 2021 Urban Mobility Report breaks down the most recent traffic data for cities, towns and cities into annual man-hours of delay per passenger. Akron, Ohio, for example, is considered an “average” urban area, and in 2020 the average commuter in the area experienced 27 hours of traffic delays. . (It can be assumed that the decline here was due to COVID-19 lockdowns and the rise of the work-from-home era, especially since most of the cities in the report saw similar declines from 2019 to 2020.)

Here are the top 10 “very large” cities and regions where drivers experienced major delays in 2020, including the number of hours the average passenger was delayed:

  1. New York and environs: 56 hours
  1. Boston and surroundings: 50 hours
  2. Houston: 49 hours
  3. Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim, California: 46 hours.
  4. San Francisco and Oakland, California: 46 hours.
  5. Washington DC/Virginia/Maryland: 42 hours
  6. Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington, Texas: 40 hours
  7. Chicago, Illinois: 39 hours
  8. Atlanta: 37 hours
  9. Philadelphia: 37 hours

Here we have the top 10 “large average” areas:

  1. Austin, Texas: 41 hours.
  2. Sacramento, California: 38 hours
  3. Oklahoma City: 35 hours
  4. Kansas City, Massachusetts: 34 hours.
  5. Providence, Rhode Island: 33 hours
  6. St. Louis: 33 hours
  7. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota: 32 hours
  8. San Antonio: 32 hours
  9. Portland, Oregon: 31 hours.
  10. San Jose, California: 31 hours.

Here are the top 10 worst middle-income neighborhoods and cities:

  1. Bridgeport-Stamford area of ​​Connecticut: 40 hours.
  2. Albany and Schenectady, New York: 33 hours.
  3. El Paso, TX: 32 hours
  4. Hartford, Connecticut: 31 hours.
  5. New Haven, Connecticut: 31 hours.
  6. Buffalo, New York: 29 hours
  7. Colorado Springs, Colorado: 29 hours
  8. Fresno, California: 29 hours.
  9. Worcester, Massachusetts: 28 hours
  10. Akron, Ohio: 27 hours

“Small medium” areas are also not free from traffic jams. Here are the 10 worst ones:

  1. Little Rock, Arkansas: 33 hours.
  2. Jackson, Mississippi: 29 hours.
  3. Beaumont, TX: 28 hours
  4. Corpus Christi, TX: 28 hours.
  5. Madison, Wisconsin: 28 hours
  6. Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, NY: 26 hours.
  7. Greensboro, NC: 25 hours
  8. Stockton, California: 25 hours
  9. Boulder, Colorado: 23 hours
  10. Brownsville, TX: 11 p.m.

Note trends

As mentioned, from 2019 to 2020, road delays for average passengers have declined in regions of all sizes. There is no more recent data showing what traffic looks like post-pandemic, but we can still see a few trends in the data we have.

While New York City and the surrounding area ranked first among very large areas in terms of hours of traffic-related delays per average commuter in 2020, the area actually ranked 4th in 2019. First place went to Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim, California in the same year, while Washington, D.C. came in second (and sixth in 2020). Trends in different regions change quite noticeably from year to year, so prioritizing a potential new hometown based on traffic alone is not a winning strategy.

And don’t think that just because the city is smaller, it has better traffic than the big guys. Commuters in San Diego (a “very large average” area) were delayed an average of 24 hours in 2020, while Little Rock, Arkansas (a “small average”) was about 33 hours. A smaller population does not mean a perfect reduction in traffic time. You also need to consider infrastructure, the availability of public transportation, and whether residents need to travel long distances on average to work or to reach major hubs.

That being said, of all the areas surveyed for this study—20 in each size category—the area with the fewest hours of traffic-related delay was the “slight average”: Indio and Cathedral City, California, where commuters experienced an average of just over six hours delay in 2020.

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