Boston continues to hold the dubious distinction of having the worst traffic in the United States, fending off the likes of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago to top traffic data analyst INRIX’s list of congested cities for the second year in a row. [...]
Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C., round out the worst five U.S. cities for congestion. Wichita, Kansas, tops the study for least congestion.
— Boston Herald
The latest annual Global Traffic Scorecard published by transportation analytics company INRIX calculated that the average Boston commuter lost 149 hours — that's more than six days — per year due to traffic congestion, amounting to $2,205 per driver in time lost. Boston ranked as the nation's most congested city for the second consecutive year, followed by Chicago (145 hours), Philadelphia (142 hours), New York City (140 hours), and Washington D.C. (124 hours).
The American average was 99 hours lost per year due to congestion, costing the United States nearly $88 billion in 2019.
Boston also managed to claim a top ten spot on the global list of traffic-choked cities, coming in at number 9, followed by Chicago at 10. Dominating the international field in 2019 were the rapidly growing Latin American cities Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and São Paulo, with a few European old-school offenders sprinkled in the mix, such as Istanbul, Rome, Paris, and London.
1 Comment
You could also say Boston roadways have the highest utilization rate, minimizing the expense of building out excess infrastructure.
My statement is facetious, but there should me more skepticism about facile statements that matter-of-fact state the dollar cost of hard to quantify things. It's misleading, and sometimes limits the thinking on how an issue can be dealt with.
I wonder how many thousands of dollars per year are spent per capita on road construction and maintenance in some city like Dallas / what is the cost of minimizing traffic. It's certainly not consistent with efficient allocation of resources to plan for large scale upgrading of road networks in cities located a couple feet above sea level, unless there is an equally ambitious plan to prevent flooding.
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