Cities with the Most Wasted Time in Traffic
Gridlock is the bane of every commuter. Horns are blasting. Cars don’t move. Tempers are flaring. And the worst city of all for traffic congestion is the nation’s capital, including the close-in suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, where each commuter suffered, on average, a delay of 82 hours last year. That’s the word from the Urban Mobility Scorecard, a nationwide study by INRIX and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) that concluded traffic gridlock has set new records for traveler misery. And we’re losing more than time. It’s costing us money, too. Adding the lost time and wasted gasoline, the researchers estimated the nationwide price tag to be $160 billion or $960 per commuter.
The top 10 worst traffic cities and the hours wasted per year:
1. Washington DC-Maryland-Virginia (82 hours)
2. Los Angeles (80 hours)
3. San Francisco (78 hours)
4. New York (74 hours)
5. San Jose (67 hours)
6. Boston (64 hours)
7. Seattle (63 hours)
8. Chicago and Houston (tie at 61 hours)
10. Riverside-San Bernardino (59 hours)
The problem has become so bad in major urban areas that drivers have to plan more than twice as much travel time as they would normally need to arrive on time — just to account for the effects of irregular delays such as bad weather, collisions and construction zones.