Anyone who’s ever sat in Boston traffic knows it’s brutal – officially the worst in the country for time wasted behind the wheel. Then you’ve got D.C., Chicago, NYC, and LA rounding out the top five traffic nightmares.
But we wanted to look at this whole commuting mess differently. Instead of just measuring stopped traffic, we asked: where are people spending the most ridiculous amounts of time just trying to get to work? Turns out, when you look at it that way, New York takes the crown, and Boston slides down to fifth place.
Here’s what we did: we dug into the Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey (yeah, I know, thrilling stuff). We looked at the 50 biggest metro areas and figured out how many poor souls have to spend over an hour commuting each way – whether they’re driving, taking trains, buses, whatever. Then we calculated the percentage of commuters with these soul-crushing 60+ minute journeys and ranked the cities.
We only included metros where more than 10% of commuters are suffering through these marathon trips to work. Honestly, the results made me grateful for my 25-minute drive, even with that one intersection that never fails to make me curse under my breath.
The New York City area motored ahead of the other metros to capture the No. 1 ranking. There, 22.6% of commuters travel at least 60 minutes to work. No other metro area broke the 20% mark.
Traffic within New York City has gotten so bad that it’s now the first U.S. city to impose so-called “congestion pricing” fees. Motorists entering the city through Lower Manhattan will be hit with the fees, which are set to take effect in 2021.
“The fees are expected to raise billions of dollars to fix the city’s troubled subway system and thin out streets that have become strangled by traffic,” The New York Times reported in March 2019.
It remains to be seen whether those fees will curb the number of commuters who are traveling at least 60 minutes to get to work.
With New York City leading the pack, here is our ranking of the 14 metro areas with the most commuters who are pressed for time.
1. New York City, New York
Number of commuters: 9,258,386
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 2,094,323
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 22.6%
2. San Francisco, California
Number of commuters: 2,254,095
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 418,825
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 18.6%
3. Riverside-San Bernardino, California
Number of commuters: 1,888,778
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 334,597
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 17.7%
4. Washington, D.C.
Number of commuters: 3,144,623
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 549,591
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 17.5%
5. Boston, Massachusetts
Number of commuters: 2,446,040
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 369,750
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 15.1%
6. Chicago, Illinois
Number of commuters: 4,455,102
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 645,809
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 14.5%
7. Atlanta, Georgia
Number of commuters: 2,715,426
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 388,918
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 14.3%
8. Los Angeles, California
Number of commuters: 6,077,813
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 841,942
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 13.9%
9. Baltimore, Maryland
Number of commuters: 1,336,740
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 178,958
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 13.4%
10. Seattle, Washington
Number of commuters: 1,921,071
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 253,066
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 13.2%
11. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Number of commuters: 2,808,466
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 333,697
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 11.9%
12. Miami, Florida
Number of commuters: 2,814,512
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 316,770
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 11.3%
13. San Jose, California
Number of commuters: 971,113
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 108,474
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 11.2%
14. Houston, Texas
Number of commuters: 3,132,202
Number of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 347,017
Share of commuters traveling at least 60 minutes to work: 11.1%
