New York City has officially been named the U.S. city with the slowest car travel, according to a recent analysis. Over the past year, drivers in the city spent an average of 94 hours stuck in traffic.
A study by TomTom, a geolocation technology company based in Amsterdam, found that the average time it took to drive a 6.2-mile stretch in the heart of New York City last year was 31 minutes and 6 seconds. This distance roughly equates to circling Central Park. New York, which recently became the first American city to implement congestion pricing, is aiming to alleviate traffic, reduce pollution, and lower carbon emissions. As part of this effort, drivers are now charged a $9 toll for entering parts of Manhattan during peak hours.
Drivers in the top 10 U.S. cities with the longest travel times lost an average of 60.6 hours commuting during peak hours last year.
Globally, the worst traffic congestion was recorded in cities across Latin America and India. Barranquilla, a major port city in Colombia along the Caribbean Sea, had the slowest speeds both within its city center and across its metropolitan area. Its metro area ranked seventh globally for congestion levels.
Gunnar Berghäuser, a traffic expert and data scientist at TomTom, could not pinpoint a specific reason why Barranquilla topped the list. However, he observed that cities with geographical bottlenecks, such as bridges or mountain roads, tend to experience higher congestion levels.
Indian cities Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Pune were ranked among the top five for traffic slowdowns in city centers, with London securing the fifth spot. According to TomTom’s live traffic maps, cities like Kolkata and Pune face delays due to rivers cutting through their centers, with bridges often causing backups. In London, drivers lost an average of 113 hours during rush hour last year.
TomTom conducted its analysis using GPS data from navigation systems and apps, assessing traffic in 500 cities across 62 countries. The study analyzed a massive dataset of 737 billion kilometers (458 billion miles) to better understand traffic conditions within urban centers and their surrounding metropolitan areas through 2024.
Cities were rated based on their average travel speed and “congestion” — a metric designed to exclude delays caused by factors like infrastructure or speed limits. Separate scores were calculated for traffic in city centers versus entire metro areas.
Mexico City’s center ranked as the worst globally for congestion, with its slow traffic taking 31 minutes and 53 seconds to cover 10 kilometers. On the other hand, New York City ranked 25th globally for slowest travel speeds, but it fell to 222nd place for pure congestion, according to the study. London showed a similar pattern; although it had some of the slowest traffic in the world, its congestion ranking was 150th. Ralf-Peter Schäfer, TomTom’s vice president of product management traffic, explained that cities like New York and London have complex infrastructures that make car travel inherently slow. Even without traffic, drivers in these cities would take longer to travel 10 kilometers than those in traffic-free Mexico City, where congestion alone accounts for delays.
New York City plans to use funds from its congestion pricing initiative to enhance infrastructure for public transportation and biking, encouraging alternative travel methods. London has operated a congestion pricing program since 2003.
The TomTom Traffic Index also considers other data points, such as the average time spent driving distances between 6 and 10 kilometers during rush hours. The index provides detailed insights into hourly traffic speeds and congestion patterns across cities and includes a visual map to show traffic hotspots by time of day.
“This was the outstanding part of this release: building a tool that allows us really to look into details in cities locally, but also in time,” said Berghäuser.
{Matzav.com}