NYC Ranked as Slowest US City for Traffic

A study from TomTom ranks New York City as the worst U.S. city for traffic congestion and travel speeds, with San Francisco coming in second, reports Magdalena Del Valle in Bloomberg CityLab.

“People from the top 10 US cities with the longest travel times lost an average of 60.6 hours commuting over peak hours by car last year,” according to the study.  Cities with bottlenecks like bridges or mountain roads tend to have higher congestion, according to a TomTom analyst.

Travel speeds and congestion were ranked separately. “The researchers gave cities one ranking based on travel speed and another on ‘congestion’ — a metric that discounts other factors that slow drivers down like infrastructure and speed limits.” In cities like New York, the built environment makes driving a car slower regardless of traffic. “To encourage faster alternative means of travel, New York City plans to invest the revenue from its new congestion pricing policy in infrastructure for improved public transit and biking.”