Traffic

Everyone who has ever driven in a major city has an opinion on traffic, and most of their comments are not suitable to print. 

There have been hundreds of articles, blog posts, questions and comments about which cities have the worst traffic.  Mention bad traffic and Los Angeles immediately comes to mind; contributors on rv.net are constantly seeking the best way to avoid Houston or Atlanta; and I personally hate driving in Austin, Texas – all of these based on personal experiences and subjective opinions.

Now there is an objective measure of traffic delays, and it comes with some surprises.  TomTom, the manufacturer of GPS devices for your car, has used the feedback from TomTom equipped vehicles to measure the time lost in traffic jams. 

Here’s their list of the cities with the worst traffic:

1. Los Angeles, CA
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Honolulu, HI
4. Seattle, WA
5. San Jose, CA
6. Washington, DC
7. New York, NY
8. Portland, OR
9. Boston, MA
10. Chicago, IL

While we may wonder how our “favorite” failed to make the list, their top ten is based on actual time lost, not opinion.  Although their data only comes from one brand of GPS devices, additional input sources would not be likely to change the outcome significantly.

On average, TomTom says that motorists around the globe spend 64 hours stuck in traffic each year, or about eight eight-hour workdays. In Los Angeles, that figure jumps to a whopping 92 hours, or 11.5 workdays.
However, Los Angeles isn’t the worst city for traffic. In the western hemisphere alone, LA doesn’t even earn a bronze medal, coming in fourth behind Sao Paolo, Mexico City, and the #1, Rio de Janeiro.
In fact, during peak travel times in Rio, 59 minutes of every hour are lost to traffic. In other words, motorists spend one hour traveling the same distance that would take them one minute if the roads were clear.