US Drivers Spend a Full Work Week in Traffic Per Year

Many employers are eager to bring their workforce back to the office post-pandemic, but employees are less than thrilled about enduring traffic congestion and long commute times to get there. City planners have focused on developing livable and walkable communities to counter traffic congestion in recent years, but data indicates U.S. workers continue to lose an average of one work week per year sitting in traffic.

According to the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, updated at the end of the first quarter, traffic congestion remains lower than pre-pandemic levels in many urban areas but delays are trending up in more than three-quarters of U.S. urban areas studied. These delays cost the typical driver more than $733 in lost time each year, totaling more than $70 billion of productivity lost to traffic across the country.

Compounding the congestion problem is a sluggish return to public transportation in the wake of the pandemic. Transit ridership remains down 28 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

Drivers around New York were most impacted by traffic delays at 101 hours of time lost, costing more than $1,700. Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Miami rounded out the top five urban areas with the largest traffic delays. On the other end of the spectrum, Cumberland, Maryland, drivers largely enjoyed congestion-free roads, losing only $22 to traffic jams each year, the report found.

At the start of the pandemic, INRIX noted strong demand for road travel in the United States during the middle of the day, and its latest research found that midday periods Monday through Saturday had more demand and performed more poorly than the traditional weekday morning commute periods, a trend which has continued and may persist in the future. Friday logged the greatest number of trips to downtown in the U.S., as many urban cores are attracting trips on both Thursday and Friday evenings, INRIX said.

“While transport professionals, engineers and planners typically look at the AM and PM peak periods when analyzing traffic, similar attention should be paid to a growing midday period,” the firm said. “Afterall, the data reveals that per hour, nearly the same number of trips start during the midday as the evening commute period, typically the most congested period of the day.”

The busiest stretch of highway in the country was westbound Interstate 4 near Orlando between the Beachline Expressway and the Western Beltway. Taking that route every day at 5 p.m. resulted in a driver losing 124 hours to traffic in 2023. Similarly, drivers who took southbound Interstate 5 in Los Angeles between Interstate 10 and Interstate 605 lost 122 hours to traffic if taken every weekday at 5 p.m.

It remains unclear how traffic patterns will ultimately shake out, but INRIX said it may be safe to label 2023 traffic patterns as the new normal.