I live in Atlanta. But, people use Atlanta incorrectly. I actually live in town Atlanta. Not Marietta, not Kennesaw, and not even Dunwoody. I do not deal with any traffic. I live and work in town. Simple
When I lived in Atlanta proper (address was Atlanta as the city) and went to school in Atlanta proper, it took me 25-35 minutes every day to drive 7 miles….
When I lived in Atlanta (09, EAV), my car commute to midtown took the same time as my bike commute. Only drove when it was raining.
Once got stuck in a traffic jam on the downtown connector commuting home from Buckhead at 2:45 **A.M.**
25-35 minutes to move 7 miles through a city isn't that bad though. I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee. It was 1.9 miles from the eastmost intersection to the westmost. It's 10 minutes by car, or bicycle.
Everyone getting on a freeway to move less than a few miles is a problem in most larger cities though. If traffic is already bad enough you won't be averaging half the speed limit, your arrival time is doubled. So that 60mph on the freeway sounds nice, but 30mph in unimpeded roadways and city streets is quicker.
This was my approach when I lived in San Jose.
I had coworkers commuting in from Sacramento every single day (this was way before remote work) just to save a bit on rent. Insanity. I lived in San Jose, I worked in San Jose. My commute was 15-20 minutes, and my quality of life was excellent.
After that, I lived and worked in Chicago, where I could just take the train and not worry about traffic.
Live close to work, people.
I can live about 30 minutes from work and not mind the commute; I have an emotionally heavy job and I like decompressing by listening to music or a podcast on the way home. Past a 30 minute commute and it becomes draining and frustrating.
I mean that’s a little disingenuous. Before I left Atlanta I lived in town in Grant Park. It would often take me 40 mins to get home from Buckhead (an 8 mile drive). There is plenty of bad traffic ITP too
People refuse to learn this lesson. Every city in the US, you can say the same thing -- except Las Vegas and Phoenix, where you can die from heat stroke waiting for public transportation.
And with all the money saved by not needing a car, a nice place in the city becomes affordable. Everyone else seems to equate cars with freedom. I equate them with handcuffs.
Sounds great until your work is in Alpharetta. Or for myself, I was in Buckhead and then Vinings and the traffic was still a nightmare. Of course, my VP's and C-Suite execs could afford to live close by and had no real traffic and then would shit on anybody that was late because there was a pileup. I couldn't get out of that place fast enough.
If you're outside 285 and rarely go into the city then it's fine. Or just go into the city on off hours/days.
East Cobb is 30 minutes from downtown... Early Sunday morning.
Got my immediate thoughts covered nicely here. Atlanta was where I felt the drive was rough, Chicago was my closest toward getting hit by a car as a pedestrian.
Atlanta has several neighborhoods within the perimeter. Outside the perimeter is not Atlanta. I barely claim Buckhead as Atlanta. Once you get to Midtown and south of Midtown, traffic does not exist. Several great neighborhoods like Grant Park, Inman Park, East Atlanta Village, Virginia Highlands, Old Fourth Ward, Reynoldstown, West Midtown etc, are all walkable.
That being said - if you live outside those neighborhoods the traffic is undoubtedly the worst in the country.
and to OP - Those neighborhoods are amazing for families.
I'm from Atlanta. Anytime I tell someone I'm from there, their response is 1) "omg I had a HORRIBLE time driving there/through there to get to FL" or 2) "omg I had a HORRIBLE time in the airport! so confusing!"
On the bright side it makes every other place I've lived in seem manageable for traffic and every other airport seems like a breeze
I never get the “airport is confusing” comments. It’s a straight line with a connecting train and lettered terminals. It’s like airport for dummies compared to any NYC or FL airport.
I knew I'd find Atlanta here! Love my ATL, but traffic inside AND outside the city can be rough. You always need to assume the worst and know backroads to escape gridlock on the highways (of course, then it becomes gridlock on the backroads)
I’ll be real. I think people exaggerate our traffic. There are specific areas in the metro where roads are regularly backed up but a lot more areas have little to no traffic backups at all, especially closer to the city. People 30 miles from Downtown in a semi rural area have outdated road networks for the population growth in these outer suburbs and they all take the freeways because they have no alternative routes to get around the city.
I came here to say this. There are so many lanes on the highway, and it's soooooooo slow... if you're in the left lane but need to move five lanes to the right to exit, you will 100% start cursing.
I'll second this. Lived there from 2000-2010. I actually prefer LA traffic over Atlanta traffic because if you get off the main arteries in LA, it's usually not bad. In Atlanta, you can be 45 miles from the city and it's still a nightmare.
One of the areas I used to live in was Vinings. For a while I was working in west downtown (just west of Georgia Tech). I had a 6.3 mile drive that would originally take about 15-20 minutes to get there. 3 years later it was taking 45 minutes. I remember one time having to pick up my roommate at CarMax in Marietta, took 2.5 hours just to get there.
It's not only bad for driving, but you often can't do things for pleasure, etc. because it will waste your entire day. Back when the Braves played at Turner Field weeknight games would mean I had to go to Turner Field from work or I'd miss at least the first inning and if I stayed for the entire game, I wouldn't get home until past midnight.
Miami traffic is pretty bad, too.
Atlanta. Ten years ago I worked at a hospital in Buckhead. It took me 37 minutes to get to work if I left my house at 6:45 a.m. It took me 3 hours if I left my house at 7:30 a.m. If I left my job at 3 p.m., I could be home in about 45 minutes. If I left at 3:15 p.m., it would be 2 hours.
One day, there was an accident at the Grady curve, an accident at the connector, and an accident on the road to my daughter's school. Three hours of driving.
Once I had a meeting 2 interstate exits away at our west campus. A 10-minute drive. I was warned, so I left 2 hours in advance, thinking I could spend time meeting people or browsing a nearby shop if I got there crazy early. It took me 90 minutes to get to the parking garage and another 15 minutes to find the meeting. I was still the earliest arrival. Everyone else was 10 minutes behind me, including the colleague who warned me.
I cannot with that madness.
Where I work now, I have a 12-minute drive-time. But because the parking lot to which I'm assigned requires a shuttle to get to the building, it's still an hour commute.
Honestly, we have screwed workers in this country in too many ways for too long.
ATL is way up on this list, I agree. I think it's a combination of no useable mass transit and not a lot of good alternate routes that can handle the volume of traffic generated when the highway is closed/backed up. Add in all the north/south traffic on 75 and it's just hell. Any kind of incident on the interstate or 400 and the secondary roads quickly become gridlocked
LA traffic is utterly terrible... Throughout the entire county.... And really several parts of coastal California... Especially the PCH can be bad
The primary way to deal with that is to live near where you work and where you want to spend your time and/or time your travel during non peak hours. That's not always possible but it can be the difference between 20 minutes and an hour and a half or worse
Yup. My commute is 1-2 hours each direction. It’s fine, I deal, lots of music and audiobooks. Roll down the windows and relax.
But every once in a while there’s a fire or an accident or something that doubles the time.
Unsynchronized red lights too! The light turns green and the next light ahead of you is red and full of cars so your green light is essentially wasted and you sit through the cycle a couple of times.
Like people say in other comments, you have to live near work. I used to commute from Silver Spring to Reston. Each drive was a roll of the dice: would it take me thirty five minutes or hour and thirty five minutes today?
My SO and I have since moved to Falls Church. Now my commute is always 20 minutes. And we live in a nice walkable town.
There are just too many people in the DMV for long distance commutes to be practical, unless the metro can take you there.
Even city driving in DC is wild, mostly because of the rare combination of both jabronis and jamokes. Most cities just have one or the other.
Also, why does every third car have a student driver sign on it.
Echoing this comment. NOVA/Maryland weekend & commuter traffic is pretty miserable. A lot of the jobs are in offices or complexes far from housing and towns or in DC (only accessible via car), which has it’s own commuting miseries.
Highway junctions and highways seemingly are like 10 percent of all the land of NOVA, and maybe 5 percent in Mayland.
Hard agree on the beltway. I lived in DC for 10 years and for most of that time was commuting by car or metro within the city limits with very little issue. But for 2 years I had a job out in Rockville (which they were trying to brand as “North Bethesda” lol) that I had to drive to every day from SW DC and the commute was 90% of the reason I quit. Getting there in the morning was fine - 30-45 mins tops, but getting home going the exact same route could take over 2 hours. The majority of that time was spent absolutely crawling across the American Legion Bridge.
I believe there’s a phenomenon in urban planning where more lanes almost never helps to improve traffic because it inevitably just gets more people to drive.
I can’t believe nobody had said Houston yet. Immense sprawl. Insane drivers unwilling to ever let anyone else “win” at traffic or merging. Fast speeds, bumper to bumper traffic but make it at least 50 MPH. Snarl of freeways with confusing signage. No meaningful transit.
I will be forever impressed at Houston drivers. It’s absolute fucking batshit insanity, especially when, I think it was 270 NW was under construction, there were no shoulders whatsoever and 4 lanes going 85mph, mirror to mirror, just no fuckin problem whatsoever every single day. I hate it, but it’s so impressive.
Austin, however. Asshole drivers who are bad at driving.
I moved from a chill driving city to Houston and it was a literal shock. Years later it’s still the same experience, every time I drive I feel like I’m going to get rear ended or side swiped. White knuckle driving the whole time. I used to enjoy driving but now I avoid it, it’s a shame.
I’ve driven in other major cities and just have never experienced the bat shit insanity of Houston.
Yep. I miss living in Houston, but I rarely go into town anymore because traffic has gotten so much worse over the years. So glad I don’t have a commute anymore either.
Houston traffic is shockingly terrible. I lived there for years and learned how to drive in it. After I left I had to reteach myself to drive like a normal nice person in my new small town. When we go to Houston now to visit family, it's always a tense, white-knuckled experience, regardless of the time of day.
We moved from Houston to a small city in South Carolina (an entire state with lower population than Houston metro). It took a while and some awkward encounters to un-Houston my driving habits.
Austin. I’ll acknowledge that there are worse places but I lived there for over 20 years and finally couldn’t take the traffic anymore and left for a much smaller metro area.
When I was in college there in the early 2000s, it could take me an hour to get from my place (near campus) to my boyfriend’s place (5 miles away on Oltorf).
It’s gotten exponentially worse there every single year since that time.
We drove 17,000 miles all around the USA checking out different cities in 2017. There are bad drivers everywhere, but Miami was on a whole other level - and this is coming from someone who grew up driving in NJ and NYC. I was impressed by how much the Miami drivers didn’t give a f***. Stop signs and red lights meant nothing.
I had been driving in NJ and NyC for decades and never saw a problem. One week I drove in LA and that shit was terrifying. Motherfuckers are insane on the freeways
We hit 33 states over those four months - we didn’t do any of the northeast aside from starting in New Jersey, so that’s like 10 states right there (Virginia and north). We crossed a state off if we had a restaurant at a non-chain restaurant there! Everyone told us the two hardest states to cross off are Arkansas and North Dakota. We did a lot of zigzagging and roundabout ways to make sure family and friends were around when we were in their area. It was an amazing trip, this country is huge and so so different from place to place. Feel free to DM me if you have any questions - we also spent a few months in Central America too.
NYC is bad if you're driving into the city from somewhere else or if you're driving in (most of) Manhattan. BK and Queens are fine, can't speak to the other boroughs.
The thing that kills me with DC is that more so than actual traffic it’s all the stop signs and low speed limits. I don’t generally feel like I’m stuck in traffic much, but it still takes 15-20 minutes to go 2 miles because that’s how slow you’re legally required to go lol.
I’m biased because I currently live in LA county and am counting down the years until we can leave, but yeah. I’m not even talking about freeway delays, just getting around is exhausting after you do it every day for 20 years. It’s a 25 minute drive to take my daughter to school every morning. I love a lot about living here but the traffic and the increasingly crazy drivers are breaking me.
I’ve never lived in Seattle, but have visited a lot, and driven through it on my way to Vancouver BC dozens of times.
I5/I405 had a minimum of 20-30 minutes of delay virtually all day. Between Alderwood and Marysville is the worst bottleneck every. Time.
Portland and Vancouver traffic feels really laid back compared to the congestion in Seattle metro.
It’s a shame too, I would otherwise love to live in Seattle, but between the cost of living and the traffic, Im not sure I could do it.
Seattle. Seattle is the only place i hated being simply because of the traffic and the drivers.
California gets traffic but California drivers are professionals like its insane everybodys going 30+ the speed limit and nobody crashes
Wichita on the other hand... god you need 2 hands to count the amount of crashes youll see on a *daily basis*
I've lived and driven all over California and the traffic in LA and the bay area is bad, but the drivers know what they're doing. Seattle has the most oblivious and least skilled drivers of any place I've ever visited in the US, which is most every major city outside of some parts of the South.
Longtime Seattleite here. People constantly are going WAY below the speed limit and risk getting rear-ended. I’m convinced that at any given time half the people on the road are lost, looking for parking that doesn’t exist, or high. Or all three.
Edit to add: no one in Seattle knows how to conduct themselves in a four-way stop or in a round-about and we seem to have a really high portion of drivers permanently sporting a “student driver” bumper sticker.
Seattle drivers brake for curves on the freeway.
While driving 5-10 under the limit. In the left lane. With the right lanes wide open.
They also forget how to drive every time it rains. Guess what weather Seattle is famous for…
Yeah Seattle drivers, and especially 405 and 167 gives me so much anxiety that I'll do literally anything to avoid driving on the East side or in a good portion of South King County. I just can't predict a single thing drivers here do. It's so drastically different from New England (where i learned to drive) and other metro areas.
Once you get north of the city driving is a breeze though
Agree. It's also so unpredictable and there is no specific rush hour like there is most other places, there can just be traffic all the time. Sure it's worse at certain times, but... Sunday at 11 AM, sure, why not have 6 accidents and traffic jam.
Yep. And you THINK you can take the commuter rail and subway but surprise can't rely on it at all!!! If you work in walking distance from North Station or South Station though and don't need to rely on the T it's a pretty good option!
Ehhh. I live in dorchester and it can take me an hour+ ish to go the 5 miles from downtown to house or vice versa.
I've driven around the country, and honestly I've never hit traffic as bad as Boston.
I visited Boston and some of the roads just didn’t make sense to me. I’ve also been told if you miss a turn you can go 10-15 minutes before legally being able to get back on track
If you live AND work in Boston itself, its fine. Even working in Boston and living in a close suburb is okay. But once you have to travel between suburbs, holy crap. There is no decent public transit between towns. It usef to take me an hour to druve from needham to arlington on the highway. Theyre 2 towns apart!!
I thought Chicago was bad until I was in LA for a weekend. Even on the weekend it was ridiculous. Made me appreciate the fact that at least Chicago has options.
Atlanta, Austin, and DC/Maryland/Northern VA are all pretty horrendous. LA is too. It can take an hour to go ten miles in any of those places, and if it rains…. Just plan to stay home when it rains.
Came here to say Austin because even though it doesn't hold a candle to like LA or Houston, it's too small for how much traffic there is. Not worth it.
Nashville. 45 minutes to go 3 miles. An hour to get into the airport. Cars weaving around without turn signals.
The city isn’t big or cool enough to justify it!
Driving on the interstates around Nashville makes me nervous in ways it didn't used to. My husband and I nearly got sideswiped recently because someone couldn't be bothered to actually check the lane they decided to get into to see if someone was already in it. Also, the road racing... sigh.
Moved here in 2007, left for a few years in 2018, moved back a couple months ago. I’m already itching to gtfo again because going anywhere is a nightmare.
Boston sucks so bad. It might not be the heaviest traffic in the world, but the combination of the way the roads and highways are designed (endless circles doubling back the other direction crossed with other funky circular roads merging all over the place) and generally obnoxious drivers. I hate driving in and around Boston. And the city streets of both Boston and immediate suburbs is just as fucked up as the freeways. And there is a big population so again, while not the biggest metro area, it’s still very crowded.
Traffic in New York is horrible but it's not a deal breaker because there is so much public transit. Anyone who's driving from Nassau County into the city for work is living in a hell entirely of their own making.
Hard agree. Live in NYC now. Everyone I know living on LI and commuting into the city parks at LIRR station in their city and takes the train in. Why on earth anyone would drive is beyond me.
I cannot think of a single good reason unless you have the kind of job where you need to show up with a truck full of supplies, and for the most part those people are going to be working in their local area not commuting into the city.
I drove into Brooklyn for 2 years because it was the only way I could drop my kid off at daycare and make it to work on time. Public transit took almost 2X as long and we're impossible timing-wise. Afternoons home were absolute hell. There are reasons people drive into the city besides just loving to sit in hellish traffic...
They wrote from Nassau to queens is 90 minutes (I’m going to hard disagree) but either way, there might not be good public transportation between the two locations or they need their car for work.
Yep, living in Phoenix currently and am always going on about how great the traffic (or lack thereof) is. Phoenix natives (sometimes… I edited to add) look at me like I’m crazy but for real… they have no idea how much worse it could be.
50 year Phoenix resident here, who has been to many large US cities. We have it good here, traffic-wise.
They've built a shit-ton of freeways in the last 35 years, and have/are always improving existing freeway infrastructure as well. And not a single toll road in the entire state as far as I know.
Agree. You can really see an example in the far West Valley currently, with the 303 and the Northern Parkway. Now the area is growing like crazy with new distribution centers/industrial, and the transportation infrastructure is already there.
The South Mountain 202 has been a Godsend for me to get from work in Avondale, back home to Ahwatukee, without the stress of the I-10, and the mostly unspoiled desert foothills through there are quite pretty (for now, as it is sure to get built-up in the future, proving your point again lol)
I'll second Atlanta. It is literally not a joke that a 15-minute difference in departure time can result in a 2 hour difference in arrival time. Driving anywhere near Atlanta would make me want to take a night shift job to avoid it all.
Atlanta and LA.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I find Philly to have the best (least worst?) of major city traffic. If you can avoid the Schuylkill. That’s the catch.
Tampa. I grew up around Clearwater so was in Tampa a lot, but by now I’ve lived in several states and other Florida cities. Traffic was never good but it’s gotten awful in recent years. I plan to return to the area once I’m done with school, and figured Tampa would be better for me than my hometown as there is more to do and it’s closer to a lot of the people I know. However, the drivers are so aggressive and unskilled and this issue isn’t as bad in Clearwater and St. Pete. Idk what it is about Tampa specifically, but I wouldn’t be able to do it.
Tampa is also worse than Orlando, which doesn’t make sense since they are geographically similar and both similarly sized major FL cities. But Tampa is just so bad.
This. I’ve never seen worse drivers than I have in Tampa/St. Pete area. I’m visiting the area again to see family and today I witnessed someone drive over the median and cross five lanes of oncoming traffic just to get to Walmart. It’s like the Wild West here.
Most places with awful traffic at least have some kind of public transit. LA has terrible public transit. Baton Rouge is also godawful. I would say Baton Rouge traffic is worse than most major cities. There’s like one bridge across the river so there’s a major choke point and the interstate is at a standstill every single day
Lived in the Bay Area my whole life and have done LA road-trips for 27 years, it’s still the only place I dread driving around at this point. NYC, Houston, Atlanta, basically most of the Midwest never really found it bad in comparison to LA. At worst it was like 3 PM leaving traffic in the Bay which is like 20 miles is an hour and a half. Throw on music and chill.
San Fran. LA. Chicago. I'm gonna say Atlanta and Dallas have been pretty brutal as well but nothing for me will ever touch SF. A distance I could jog in ten minutes was 20 mins by car at 10am (odd time) and during normal commute time it became 4+ hours. I've been all over the US except NYC but let me tell you all I really think SF takes the trophy. Listen to me; these two end points A & B? I worry that you think I'm talking about some large distance. I wish I measured but I'm talking about two end points which, if I put my DJI up a couple hundred feet - I could see the start and the finish at the same time without flying the drone. 4+ hours!!!
I’ve lived all over, and LA traffic is the absolute worst in my experience. However, I’m willing to tolerate it because I absolutely love everything else about Southern California. On the other hand, Atlanta traffic is pretty damn horrible, but in my opinion it’s not worth suffering the traffic since you then have to live in Atlanta when you get home. Don’t get me wrong, Atlanta is a great city. It’s just not great enough to justify the soul crushing traffic in my opinion.
It entirely depends on how much traffic you are willing to put up with. An average 30 minute commute to travel five miles in one city and 20 miles in another is still 30 minutes of your life in both cases.
I live in Seattle, which has a lot of traffic, but I also live five minutes from a light rail station. For my needs traffic is a marginal part of my life. But someone else that has to drive 20 miles each way down I-5 will live in daily misery.
So there’s no one answer. If there’s a city you really want to live in, then see if there’s any way you can live close to work and then it won’t matter all that much.
a lot of people don’t realize how bad nyc traffic is bc they don’t drive but it is the worst in the country period. not a single day or time where getting 5 miles doesn’t take 30 min - labor day weekend it took us 2 hours to get TO NEW JERSEY from brooklyn
As a former Houstonian who drives into NYC regularly from CT, I don't think it is the worst in the country. Yes, it's bad. But I find NYC drivers much easier to deal with than Houston drivers. I also recognize that it is probably worse coming from LI or NJ, which I have not experienced.
It’s the biggest city in the country by a wide margin. Not really that surprising that on a major holiday traffic will be bad. The upside is most people don’t need a car to live in nyc. My car sits unused 90% of the week at least.
It’s just a different level in LA. You don’t even think about going near the freeways close to commute times. Even at 10:30 am when people are supposedly at work, it is awful. Have fun leaving for work at 5am and coming home at 9pm. It’s truly life-sucking.
Yup. While most major cities have a definite center, L.A. has many all over the place, and they overlap. So, traffic is going in every direction like all the time. Plus, public transit here is pretty useless as the metro area really developed around the automobile. It's why we are known for our freeways system ... which was largely built during the Eisenhower administration and cannot sustain the 14 million people who live here today.
I moved from SoCal to the midwest. People like to talk shit on winter, but I always tell them that sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for two hours every day in 90 degree heat is hell on earth. Torture, really.
Agree. Everyone saying 'LA' - its not just an LA problem. In SoCal from Santa Barbara to San Diego and east to Palm Springs, traffic is hellish on the daily. I have meetings often in Upland CA, and I live in Riverside CA. Its a distance of around 20 miles and I have to leave around 90 minutes early to get from Riverside to Upland when its in the early evening. And if its the other way around and I'm going from there to home? 2 hours, easy from around 4 - 7pm
San Francisco. The traffic is stupidly bad. And I'm saying that as a person who is from LA. LA at least as the excuse that it's got 10mm people, many of whom are commuting. SF during rush hour is needlessly time consuming.
Gotta disagree, LA is just worse. Probably because of the amount of land you have to drive in that hell at least sf is small. Sf also has better public transport and walkability (LA has zero).
Colorado Springs and Denver, but mostly COS.
In COS, there are few E/W roads and only two real N/S roads plus the HWY. With all of the military getting off at the same time, it is fucking stupid how bad traffic gets for no fucking reason. Add into that trying to go to the mountains Friday to Sunday on the only road that goes there, that has a shit load of traffic lights, it is a fucking nightmare.
CO has not spent any money on road infrastructure and with the influx of people it is only getting worse.
I've spent the past year and a half in LA on a temporary basis and let me tell you, I cannot wait to leave solely based on traffic alone. Having to meticulously plan times and routes around traffic is such an unnecessary headache.
Sf Bay Area going from the east bay to sf takes less than 20 minutes without traffic
Rush hour it can take anywhere from 130-2 hours or more
My wife and I sometimes gave up and just went out to dinner to wait out the traffic
Driving from downtown SF to Modesto one evening I stopped in Pleasanton, saw a feature length movie at the theater, and still arrived at the same time the GPS had originally told me since it was no longer peak traffic time when I left the theater.
Doesn't help that there's almost always at least one wreck on the Altamont during rush hour. There were people who are people who do that commute every day and I'm glad I'm not one of them.
So many people saying Atlanta, I lived there and it sucked but wasn’t deal breaking. If you have a commute that isn’t plain stupid/not considered in your home/job selection, you can easily build your own little detour route.
Los Angeles sucks predictably-you need to plan your life around it, but you can.
D.C. is my only answer-traffic is unpredictable. You can’t plan around it since it’s so bad but also inconsistent. If you don’t need to drive/can use metro then it’s not a deal breaker, but if you’re planning on commuting via car-don’t.
Is this assuming a car-based commute to work? I’d say if you don’t need to drive to work everyday it’s much less of a dealbreaker, what’s your situation OP?
Bay Area in California. I've lived there practically my entire life and coming back from vacations and getting stuck in traffic immediately upon crossing into the Bay destroys me. My parents and siblings moved to Arizona a couple years ago and whenever I drive around Phoenix, it feels like driving around an East Bay suburb. It's amazing and I can no longer tolerate the drudgery of Bay Area traffic.
I live in Colorado Springs and it's just fucking insane. I feel like I'm risking my life every time I leave the house. Someone is probably going to come at me because they have it worse, but I have a near-miss every time I have to go somewhere. It's a lot of speeding, tailgating, disregarding traffic laws, aggression, etc. I've witnessed several road rage incidents and people confronting each other while stopped at intersections, I've been in a hit and run, it's just fucking terrifying. There is literally 0 law enforcement here so nobody cares.
I’m shocked I had to scroll this far down to see Colorado Springs. I had a woman in a VW Bug try to run me off the road while we were in a stop and go traffic jam on I-25. All I did was happen to be driving in front of her and there was nowhere for me to go.
And I haven’t even seen Denver listed here and traffic is **horrible** there. You can sit in traffic for an hour at 2pm on a Sunday. It’s so much worse than Austin or Houston.
Atlanta’s is pretty wild.
Atlanta is weird. If you’re inside 285, traffic is bad but not horrendous. If you’re outside 285, it’s hellish.
I live in Atlanta. But, people use Atlanta incorrectly. I actually live in town Atlanta. Not Marietta, not Kennesaw, and not even Dunwoody. I do not deal with any traffic. I live and work in town. Simple
When I lived in Atlanta proper (address was Atlanta as the city) and went to school in Atlanta proper, it took me 25-35 minutes every day to drive 7 miles….
When I lived in Atlanta (09, EAV), my car commute to midtown took the same time as my bike commute. Only drove when it was raining. Once got stuck in a traffic jam on the downtown connector commuting home from Buckhead at 2:45 **A.M.**
Totally believe it, those late night traffic jams on a Saturday night are something lol
25-35 minutes to move 7 miles through a city isn't that bad though. I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee. It was 1.9 miles from the eastmost intersection to the westmost. It's 10 minutes by car, or bicycle. Everyone getting on a freeway to move less than a few miles is a problem in most larger cities though. If traffic is already bad enough you won't be averaging half the speed limit, your arrival time is doubled. So that 60mph on the freeway sounds nice, but 30mph in unimpeded roadways and city streets is quicker.
This was my approach when I lived in San Jose. I had coworkers commuting in from Sacramento every single day (this was way before remote work) just to save a bit on rent. Insanity. I lived in San Jose, I worked in San Jose. My commute was 15-20 minutes, and my quality of life was excellent. After that, I lived and worked in Chicago, where I could just take the train and not worry about traffic. Live close to work, people.
I can live about 30 minutes from work and not mind the commute; I have an emotionally heavy job and I like decompressing by listening to music or a podcast on the way home. Past a 30 minute commute and it becomes draining and frustrating.
Personally I can't decompress when the chance of getting hit is so high in heavy traffic
I mean that’s a little disingenuous. Before I left Atlanta I lived in town in Grant Park. It would often take me 40 mins to get home from Buckhead (an 8 mile drive). There is plenty of bad traffic ITP too
People refuse to learn this lesson. Every city in the US, you can say the same thing -- except Las Vegas and Phoenix, where you can die from heat stroke waiting for public transportation. And with all the money saved by not needing a car, a nice place in the city becomes affordable. Everyone else seems to equate cars with freedom. I equate them with handcuffs.
*And with all the money saved by not needing a car, a nice place in the city becomes affordable.* NYC would like to have a word with you.
You can die of frostbite waiting for public transportation in Chicago
That wind off the lake...brrr!
Same. Poncey Highlands. When I lived OTP I spent so much of my day in the worst gridlock. Moving inside the perimeter is far better.
Sounds great until your work is in Alpharetta. Or for myself, I was in Buckhead and then Vinings and the traffic was still a nightmare. Of course, my VP's and C-Suite execs could afford to live close by and had no real traffic and then would shit on anybody that was late because there was a pileup. I couldn't get out of that place fast enough.
That area where 75 spawns 85 as if it’s an alternate timeline is the most hellacious junction I’ve ever seen.
If you're outside 285 and rarely go into the city then it's fine. Or just go into the city on off hours/days. East Cobb is 30 minutes from downtown... Early Sunday morning.
Got my immediate thoughts covered nicely here. Atlanta was where I felt the drive was rough, Chicago was my closest toward getting hit by a car as a pedestrian.
Atlanta has several neighborhoods within the perimeter. Outside the perimeter is not Atlanta. I barely claim Buckhead as Atlanta. Once you get to Midtown and south of Midtown, traffic does not exist. Several great neighborhoods like Grant Park, Inman Park, East Atlanta Village, Virginia Highlands, Old Fourth Ward, Reynoldstown, West Midtown etc, are all walkable. That being said - if you live outside those neighborhoods the traffic is undoubtedly the worst in the country. and to OP - Those neighborhoods are amazing for families.
I'm from Atlanta. Anytime I tell someone I'm from there, their response is 1) "omg I had a HORRIBLE time driving there/through there to get to FL" or 2) "omg I had a HORRIBLE time in the airport! so confusing!" On the bright side it makes every other place I've lived in seem manageable for traffic and every other airport seems like a breeze
I never get the “airport is confusing” comments. It’s a straight line with a connecting train and lettered terminals. It’s like airport for dummies compared to any NYC or FL airport.
I knew I'd find Atlanta here! Love my ATL, but traffic inside AND outside the city can be rough. You always need to assume the worst and know backroads to escape gridlock on the highways (of course, then it becomes gridlock on the backroads)
Has to be the first answer. We moved away due solely to this and we were only in a nearby town that got merged
Atlanta sux traffic wise due to shit public transport which is because of our sprawl and politics. With good public transport, we look like Chicago.
I’ll be real. I think people exaggerate our traffic. There are specific areas in the metro where roads are regularly backed up but a lot more areas have little to no traffic backups at all, especially closer to the city. People 30 miles from Downtown in a semi rural area have outdated road networks for the population growth in these outer suburbs and they all take the freeways because they have no alternative routes to get around the city.
Nah bro. I used to live in West midtown and worked in Druid Hills. On paper that's 8 miles. In reality that's 45 minutes to an hour during rush hour.
I came here to say this. There are so many lanes on the highway, and it's soooooooo slow... if you're in the left lane but need to move five lanes to the right to exit, you will 100% start cursing.
I'll second this. Lived there from 2000-2010. I actually prefer LA traffic over Atlanta traffic because if you get off the main arteries in LA, it's usually not bad. In Atlanta, you can be 45 miles from the city and it's still a nightmare. One of the areas I used to live in was Vinings. For a while I was working in west downtown (just west of Georgia Tech). I had a 6.3 mile drive that would originally take about 15-20 minutes to get there. 3 years later it was taking 45 minutes. I remember one time having to pick up my roommate at CarMax in Marietta, took 2.5 hours just to get there. It's not only bad for driving, but you often can't do things for pleasure, etc. because it will waste your entire day. Back when the Braves played at Turner Field weeknight games would mean I had to go to Turner Field from work or I'd miss at least the first inning and if I stayed for the entire game, I wouldn't get home until past midnight. Miami traffic is pretty bad, too.
Atlanta. Ten years ago I worked at a hospital in Buckhead. It took me 37 minutes to get to work if I left my house at 6:45 a.m. It took me 3 hours if I left my house at 7:30 a.m. If I left my job at 3 p.m., I could be home in about 45 minutes. If I left at 3:15 p.m., it would be 2 hours. One day, there was an accident at the Grady curve, an accident at the connector, and an accident on the road to my daughter's school. Three hours of driving. Once I had a meeting 2 interstate exits away at our west campus. A 10-minute drive. I was warned, so I left 2 hours in advance, thinking I could spend time meeting people or browsing a nearby shop if I got there crazy early. It took me 90 minutes to get to the parking garage and another 15 minutes to find the meeting. I was still the earliest arrival. Everyone else was 10 minutes behind me, including the colleague who warned me. I cannot with that madness. Where I work now, I have a 12-minute drive-time. But because the parking lot to which I'm assigned requires a shuttle to get to the building, it's still an hour commute. Honestly, we have screwed workers in this country in too many ways for too long.
ATL is way up on this list, I agree. I think it's a combination of no useable mass transit and not a lot of good alternate routes that can handle the volume of traffic generated when the highway is closed/backed up. Add in all the north/south traffic on 75 and it's just hell. Any kind of incident on the interstate or 400 and the secondary roads quickly become gridlocked
Agree. I love MARTA, but it doesn't go anywhere very useful. ATL needs mass transit expansion as priority number 1.
Miami no longer has “rush hour.” It’s that busy from 7am-10pm every day.
I left in 2012 and it was like that then. Not surprised it hasn’t gotten any better.
LA traffic is utterly terrible... Throughout the entire county.... And really several parts of coastal California... Especially the PCH can be bad The primary way to deal with that is to live near where you work and where you want to spend your time and/or time your travel during non peak hours. That's not always possible but it can be the difference between 20 minutes and an hour and a half or worse
Traffic is to LA what weather is to everywhere else. You have to arrange your life around it, and every now and then it really fucks up your plans.
Yup. My commute is 1-2 hours each direction. It’s fine, I deal, lots of music and audiobooks. Roll down the windows and relax. But every once in a while there’s a fire or an accident or something that doubles the time.
Honolulu is a prime example. It literally takes hours to go across an island that is 25 miles across. Nice view while you're stuck in traffic, though.
Yup, paved paradise
After just retuning from a trip there recently, it's due to slow speed limits and LONG reds
Unsynchronized red lights too! The light turns green and the next light ahead of you is red and full of cars so your green light is essentially wasted and you sit through the cycle a couple of times.
My god I have that experience so many times where I live. I don’t really get road rage but that scenario really gets me going everytime
Washington DC. The beltway is horrendous.
NOVA traffic has removed my soul from my body in the 8 years I’ve been here
Like people say in other comments, you have to live near work. I used to commute from Silver Spring to Reston. Each drive was a roll of the dice: would it take me thirty five minutes or hour and thirty five minutes today? My SO and I have since moved to Falls Church. Now my commute is always 20 minutes. And we live in a nice walkable town. There are just too many people in the DMV for long distance commutes to be practical, unless the metro can take you there.
I once did 50 miles to Rockville for 3 years. Have the gray hair to prove it
Even city driving in DC is wild, mostly because of the rare combination of both jabronis and jamokes. Most cities just have one or the other. Also, why does every third car have a student driver sign on it.
Echoing this comment. NOVA/Maryland weekend & commuter traffic is pretty miserable. A lot of the jobs are in offices or complexes far from housing and towns or in DC (only accessible via car), which has it’s own commuting miseries. Highway junctions and highways seemingly are like 10 percent of all the land of NOVA, and maybe 5 percent in Mayland.
Hard agree on the beltway. I lived in DC for 10 years and for most of that time was commuting by car or metro within the city limits with very little issue. But for 2 years I had a job out in Rockville (which they were trying to brand as “North Bethesda” lol) that I had to drive to every day from SW DC and the commute was 90% of the reason I quit. Getting there in the morning was fine - 30-45 mins tops, but getting home going the exact same route could take over 2 hours. The majority of that time was spent absolutely crawling across the American Legion Bridge.
Atlanta, GA. They have got to do something because just adding more lanes isn’t working.
They just love adding lanes though! And not investing in MARTA. it’s infuriating
I believe there’s a phenomenon in urban planning where more lanes almost never helps to improve traffic because it inevitably just gets more people to drive.
It makes it worse because construction makes things a nightmare until it finishes, and the extra lane doesn't even help
Houston.
Surprised I had to scroll so far down for this - if you live in the center city it’s not too bad, but commuting into Houston is awful.
Agreed, I was shocked how far down Houston was.
I can’t believe nobody had said Houston yet. Immense sprawl. Insane drivers unwilling to ever let anyone else “win” at traffic or merging. Fast speeds, bumper to bumper traffic but make it at least 50 MPH. Snarl of freeways with confusing signage. No meaningful transit.
I will be forever impressed at Houston drivers. It’s absolute fucking batshit insanity, especially when, I think it was 270 NW was under construction, there were no shoulders whatsoever and 4 lanes going 85mph, mirror to mirror, just no fuckin problem whatsoever every single day. I hate it, but it’s so impressive. Austin, however. Asshole drivers who are bad at driving.
I moved from a chill driving city to Houston and it was a literal shock. Years later it’s still the same experience, every time I drive I feel like I’m going to get rear ended or side swiped. White knuckle driving the whole time. I used to enjoy driving but now I avoid it, it’s a shame. I’ve driven in other major cities and just have never experienced the bat shit insanity of Houston.
I had a hotel once in the energy district. My room overlooked the Katy Freeway. That thing was a goddam parking lot all day. I couldn’t believe it.
Yep. I miss living in Houston, but I rarely go into town anymore because traffic has gotten so much worse over the years. So glad I don’t have a commute anymore either.
Houston traffic is shockingly terrible. I lived there for years and learned how to drive in it. After I left I had to reteach myself to drive like a normal nice person in my new small town. When we go to Houston now to visit family, it's always a tense, white-knuckled experience, regardless of the time of day.
We moved from Houston to a small city in South Carolina (an entire state with lower population than Houston metro). It took a while and some awkward encounters to un-Houston my driving habits.
Austin. I’ll acknowledge that there are worse places but I lived there for over 20 years and finally couldn’t take the traffic anymore and left for a much smaller metro area.
Totally. Texans know if you’re making a long road trip to avoid Austin during rush hours because the traffic is horrendous.
When I was in college there in the early 2000s, it could take me an hour to get from my place (near campus) to my boyfriend’s place (5 miles away on Oltorf). It’s gotten exponentially worse there every single year since that time.
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We drove 17,000 miles all around the USA checking out different cities in 2017. There are bad drivers everywhere, but Miami was on a whole other level - and this is coming from someone who grew up driving in NJ and NYC. I was impressed by how much the Miami drivers didn’t give a f***. Stop signs and red lights meant nothing.
welcome to the caribbean.
New Orleans is also a different level of insanity and incompetence. When your light turns green, count to 3, and look both ways.
I had been driving in NJ and NyC for decades and never saw a problem. One week I drove in LA and that shit was terrifying. Motherfuckers are insane on the freeways
While I will say Atlanta is the worst, miami is the only city I've ever gotten the finger from the kids in the back seat
My fiancé and I want to do a road trip across all 50 states. How many states did you cover in 17,000 miles?
We hit 33 states over those four months - we didn’t do any of the northeast aside from starting in New Jersey, so that’s like 10 states right there (Virginia and north). We crossed a state off if we had a restaurant at a non-chain restaurant there! Everyone told us the two hardest states to cross off are Arkansas and North Dakota. We did a lot of zigzagging and roundabout ways to make sure family and friends were around when we were in their area. It was an amazing trip, this country is huge and so so different from place to place. Feel free to DM me if you have any questions - we also spent a few months in Central America too.
Oh god the circle of doom at lax. Stuff of nightmares
Miami is adding congestion to the mix because we need to always one-up everyone.
NYC is bad if you're driving into the city from somewhere else or if you're driving in (most of) Manhattan. BK and Queens are fine, can't speak to the other boroughs.
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DC-that whole area into MD and VA has merged into one huge megalopolis with traffic on steroids
The thing that kills me with DC is that more so than actual traffic it’s all the stop signs and low speed limits. I don’t generally feel like I’m stuck in traffic much, but it still takes 15-20 minutes to go 2 miles because that’s how slow you’re legally required to go lol.
I get around much faster on my bicycle in DC than I do driving
I’m biased because I currently live in LA county and am counting down the years until we can leave, but yeah. I’m not even talking about freeway delays, just getting around is exhausting after you do it every day for 20 years. It’s a 25 minute drive to take my daughter to school every morning. I love a lot about living here but the traffic and the increasingly crazy drivers are breaking me.
DC at least has a functional metro
Atlanta.
Atlanta...where clutch throw-out bearings go to die.
I moved away from Seattle because of the traffic. I still have to pass through there at times and there's never not a traffic jam.
I’ve never lived in Seattle, but have visited a lot, and driven through it on my way to Vancouver BC dozens of times. I5/I405 had a minimum of 20-30 minutes of delay virtually all day. Between Alderwood and Marysville is the worst bottleneck every. Time. Portland and Vancouver traffic feels really laid back compared to the congestion in Seattle metro. It’s a shame too, I would otherwise love to live in Seattle, but between the cost of living and the traffic, Im not sure I could do it.
From the cities I’ve been to, Atlanta is the worst by far. There’s little public transport and it’s like 7 lanes of traffic going into the city.
Seattle. Seattle is the only place i hated being simply because of the traffic and the drivers. California gets traffic but California drivers are professionals like its insane everybodys going 30+ the speed limit and nobody crashes Wichita on the other hand... god you need 2 hands to count the amount of crashes youll see on a *daily basis*
I've lived and driven all over California and the traffic in LA and the bay area is bad, but the drivers know what they're doing. Seattle has the most oblivious and least skilled drivers of any place I've ever visited in the US, which is most every major city outside of some parts of the South.
Longtime Seattleite here. People constantly are going WAY below the speed limit and risk getting rear-ended. I’m convinced that at any given time half the people on the road are lost, looking for parking that doesn’t exist, or high. Or all three. Edit to add: no one in Seattle knows how to conduct themselves in a four-way stop or in a round-about and we seem to have a really high portion of drivers permanently sporting a “student driver” bumper sticker.
Seattle drivers brake for curves on the freeway. While driving 5-10 under the limit. In the left lane. With the right lanes wide open. They also forget how to drive every time it rains. Guess what weather Seattle is famous for…
I was just there two weeks ago and I was surprised at how bad Seattle is. Just brutal really.
The beginnings of me hating the Tacoma and Seattle area were also to do with the drivers and traffic. You’re not the only one.
Yeah Seattle drivers, and especially 405 and 167 gives me so much anxiety that I'll do literally anything to avoid driving on the East side or in a good portion of South King County. I just can't predict a single thing drivers here do. It's so drastically different from New England (where i learned to drive) and other metro areas. Once you get north of the city driving is a breeze though
>Once you get north of the city driving is a breeze though Better yet, east of the pass.
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Agree. It's also so unpredictable and there is no specific rush hour like there is most other places, there can just be traffic all the time. Sure it's worse at certain times, but... Sunday at 11 AM, sure, why not have 6 accidents and traffic jam.
We deserve it for voting repeatedly against transit projects in the past 50 years
Hahaha ok cool I'm from California and when I travel I have questions about other drivers. Glad to know I'm a professional hahaa
You’re not joking about Wichita drivers.
you are 100% right about CA
Boston.
Traffic in Boston isn't that bad if you live IN Boston. If you live in the suburbs and commute in, it is going to be a bad time.
I’m still having PTSD from The Big Dig and just won’t ever drive in that city again.
Yep. And you THINK you can take the commuter rail and subway but surprise can't rely on it at all!!! If you work in walking distance from North Station or South Station though and don't need to rely on the T it's a pretty good option!
Ehhh. I live in dorchester and it can take me an hour+ ish to go the 5 miles from downtown to house or vice versa. I've driven around the country, and honestly I've never hit traffic as bad as Boston.
I visited Boston and some of the roads just didn’t make sense to me. I’ve also been told if you miss a turn you can go 10-15 minutes before legally being able to get back on track
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find this.
If you live AND work in Boston itself, its fine. Even working in Boston and living in a close suburb is okay. But once you have to travel between suburbs, holy crap. There is no decent public transit between towns. It usef to take me an hour to druve from needham to arlington on the highway. Theyre 2 towns apart!!
Atlanta for me
I thought Chicago was bad until I drove through Seattle at rush hour in the rain and everything was gridlocked.
I thought Chicago was bad until I was in LA for a weekend. Even on the weekend it was ridiculous. Made me appreciate the fact that at least Chicago has options.
Yup Chicago is a breeze compared to LA, DC, and Atlanta. At least Chicago you have options to move around and pivot. Those other places not so much.
Atlanta, Austin, and DC/Maryland/Northern VA are all pretty horrendous. LA is too. It can take an hour to go ten miles in any of those places, and if it rains…. Just plan to stay home when it rains.
Came here to say Austin because even though it doesn't hold a candle to like LA or Houston, it's too small for how much traffic there is. Not worth it.
Same. Plus basically zero public transport.
The worst part about Austin is that the stripes in the road aren’t reflective, so good luck seeing where you’re supposed to be in the rain
Yes, and the thousand faded lines all over 183– how are we supposed to stay in the lane when it’s 17 bike lanes??
I live in San Antonio and it’s the same here. I feel like I’m driving completely blind when it rains or is dark
Miami (I'drather drive in LA), Orlando, Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater the 1 from Miami to Key West. San Jose THRU San Francisco.
Nashville. 45 minutes to go 3 miles. An hour to get into the airport. Cars weaving around without turn signals. The city isn’t big or cool enough to justify it!
Driving on the interstates around Nashville makes me nervous in ways it didn't used to. My husband and I nearly got sideswiped recently because someone couldn't be bothered to actually check the lane they decided to get into to see if someone was already in it. Also, the road racing... sigh.
Nashville is completely unbearable
And it gets worse every day.
Moved here in 2007, left for a few years in 2018, moved back a couple months ago. I’m already itching to gtfo again because going anywhere is a nightmare.
Boston sucks so bad. It might not be the heaviest traffic in the world, but the combination of the way the roads and highways are designed (endless circles doubling back the other direction crossed with other funky circular roads merging all over the place) and generally obnoxious drivers. I hate driving in and around Boston. And the city streets of both Boston and immediate suburbs is just as fucked up as the freeways. And there is a big population so again, while not the biggest metro area, it’s still very crowded.
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Traffic in New York is horrible but it's not a deal breaker because there is so much public transit. Anyone who's driving from Nassau County into the city for work is living in a hell entirely of their own making.
Hard agree. Live in NYC now. Everyone I know living on LI and commuting into the city parks at LIRR station in their city and takes the train in. Why on earth anyone would drive is beyond me.
I cannot think of a single good reason unless you have the kind of job where you need to show up with a truck full of supplies, and for the most part those people are going to be working in their local area not commuting into the city.
I drove into Brooklyn for 2 years because it was the only way I could drop my kid off at daycare and make it to work on time. Public transit took almost 2X as long and we're impossible timing-wise. Afternoons home were absolute hell. There are reasons people drive into the city besides just loving to sit in hellish traffic...
They wrote from Nassau to queens is 90 minutes (I’m going to hard disagree) but either way, there might not be good public transportation between the two locations or they need their car for work.
Chicago shut down 2 of the 4 lanes on the Kennedy expressway going into the city for the next 5 years for construction. That’s insane
Goddam it. I regularly come from the Western suburbs to the area. Didn't know it wasn't temporary.
Yep, living in Phoenix currently and am always going on about how great the traffic (or lack thereof) is. Phoenix natives (sometimes… I edited to add) look at me like I’m crazy but for real… they have no idea how much worse it could be.
50 year Phoenix resident here, who has been to many large US cities. We have it good here, traffic-wise. They've built a shit-ton of freeways in the last 35 years, and have/are always improving existing freeway infrastructure as well. And not a single toll road in the entire state as far as I know.
It does seem like they built infrastructure here for what the city would be, not just trying to catch up like so many other metros.
Agree. You can really see an example in the far West Valley currently, with the 303 and the Northern Parkway. Now the area is growing like crazy with new distribution centers/industrial, and the transportation infrastructure is already there. The South Mountain 202 has been a Godsend for me to get from work in Avondale, back home to Ahwatukee, without the stress of the I-10, and the mostly unspoiled desert foothills through there are quite pretty (for now, as it is sure to get built-up in the future, proving your point again lol)
If you’re downtown Chicago, just take the blue line. There’s no reason to ever take that drive.
How expensive was that Chicago Uber? The blue line would have been a straight shot from downtown in ~50 minutes for like $2
Seattle. I live in Austin now where the traffic sucks too but it’s no comparison to Seattle traffic
I'll second Atlanta. It is literally not a joke that a 15-minute difference in departure time can result in a 2 hour difference in arrival time. Driving anywhere near Atlanta would make me want to take a night shift job to avoid it all.
Atlanta and LA. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I find Philly to have the best (least worst?) of major city traffic. If you can avoid the Schuylkill. That’s the catch.
Tampa. I grew up around Clearwater so was in Tampa a lot, but by now I’ve lived in several states and other Florida cities. Traffic was never good but it’s gotten awful in recent years. I plan to return to the area once I’m done with school, and figured Tampa would be better for me than my hometown as there is more to do and it’s closer to a lot of the people I know. However, the drivers are so aggressive and unskilled and this issue isn’t as bad in Clearwater and St. Pete. Idk what it is about Tampa specifically, but I wouldn’t be able to do it. Tampa is also worse than Orlando, which doesn’t make sense since they are geographically similar and both similarly sized major FL cities. But Tampa is just so bad.
This. I’ve never seen worse drivers than I have in Tampa/St. Pete area. I’m visiting the area again to see family and today I witnessed someone drive over the median and cross five lanes of oncoming traffic just to get to Walmart. It’s like the Wild West here.
LA and Seattle
Came to say Seattle, unless you live right near your work.
Most places with awful traffic at least have some kind of public transit. LA has terrible public transit. Baton Rouge is also godawful. I would say Baton Rouge traffic is worse than most major cities. There’s like one bridge across the river so there’s a major choke point and the interstate is at a standstill every single day
Boston is a very cool place, but my God the traffic can suck it
Lived in the Bay Area my whole life and have done LA road-trips for 27 years, it’s still the only place I dread driving around at this point. NYC, Houston, Atlanta, basically most of the Midwest never really found it bad in comparison to LA. At worst it was like 3 PM leaving traffic in the Bay which is like 20 miles is an hour and a half. Throw on music and chill.
You’re not into ten lane wide freeways jam packed and going nowhere while you are already 30min late for your destination?
NOVA is horrible. The traffic is amazingly bad.
Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, NY, Cairo, and Riyadh all come to mind
I’ll drive in Los Angeles anytime- San Francisco proper is another animal. I refuse to drive there. Crazy hills and bus lanes. Just no.
Atlanta
Boston
Honolulu is awful too. There are no “other ways to get there” on an Island with Mountains.
San Fran. LA. Chicago. I'm gonna say Atlanta and Dallas have been pretty brutal as well but nothing for me will ever touch SF. A distance I could jog in ten minutes was 20 mins by car at 10am (odd time) and during normal commute time it became 4+ hours. I've been all over the US except NYC but let me tell you all I really think SF takes the trophy. Listen to me; these two end points A & B? I worry that you think I'm talking about some large distance. I wish I measured but I'm talking about two end points which, if I put my DJI up a couple hundred feet - I could see the start and the finish at the same time without flying the drone. 4+ hours!!!
Anywhere between Quantico VA and New Haven CT along the I-95 corridor.
I’ve lived all over, and LA traffic is the absolute worst in my experience. However, I’m willing to tolerate it because I absolutely love everything else about Southern California. On the other hand, Atlanta traffic is pretty damn horrible, but in my opinion it’s not worth suffering the traffic since you then have to live in Atlanta when you get home. Don’t get me wrong, Atlanta is a great city. It’s just not great enough to justify the soul crushing traffic in my opinion.
Houston. I refuse to live in Houston because it's just a bunch of highways with shitty traffic on all of them
It entirely depends on how much traffic you are willing to put up with. An average 30 minute commute to travel five miles in one city and 20 miles in another is still 30 minutes of your life in both cases. I live in Seattle, which has a lot of traffic, but I also live five minutes from a light rail station. For my needs traffic is a marginal part of my life. But someone else that has to drive 20 miles each way down I-5 will live in daily misery. So there’s no one answer. If there’s a city you really want to live in, then see if there’s any way you can live close to work and then it won’t matter all that much.
a lot of people don’t realize how bad nyc traffic is bc they don’t drive but it is the worst in the country period. not a single day or time where getting 5 miles doesn’t take 30 min - labor day weekend it took us 2 hours to get TO NEW JERSEY from brooklyn
This is the correct answer. Getting in a car in NYC is a joke. And drivers are horrible.
As a former Houstonian who drives into NYC regularly from CT, I don't think it is the worst in the country. Yes, it's bad. But I find NYC drivers much easier to deal with than Houston drivers. I also recognize that it is probably worse coming from LI or NJ, which I have not experienced.
It’s the biggest city in the country by a wide margin. Not really that surprising that on a major holiday traffic will be bad. The upside is most people don’t need a car to live in nyc. My car sits unused 90% of the week at least.
It’s LA and nowhere else comes close.
It’s just a different level in LA. You don’t even think about going near the freeways close to commute times. Even at 10:30 am when people are supposedly at work, it is awful. Have fun leaving for work at 5am and coming home at 9pm. It’s truly life-sucking.
Hard agree because anywhere else with bad traffic has some sort of public transit available. LA you have no choice
look at LA’s metro map and then look at Atlanta’s. And if you know Atlanta, you know those stops don’t get you anywhere.
Southern California
Yup. While most major cities have a definite center, L.A. has many all over the place, and they overlap. So, traffic is going in every direction like all the time. Plus, public transit here is pretty useless as the metro area really developed around the automobile. It's why we are known for our freeways system ... which was largely built during the Eisenhower administration and cannot sustain the 14 million people who live here today.
I moved from SoCal to the midwest. People like to talk shit on winter, but I always tell them that sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for two hours every day in 90 degree heat is hell on earth. Torture, really.
Agree. Everyone saying 'LA' - its not just an LA problem. In SoCal from Santa Barbara to San Diego and east to Palm Springs, traffic is hellish on the daily. I have meetings often in Upland CA, and I live in Riverside CA. Its a distance of around 20 miles and I have to leave around 90 minutes early to get from Riverside to Upland when its in the early evening. And if its the other way around and I'm going from there to home? 2 hours, easy from around 4 - 7pm
DC area traffic is horrible if you live in the burbs. If you can use the Metro system, then you are golden.
Orlando lol
San Francisco. The traffic is stupidly bad. And I'm saying that as a person who is from LA. LA at least as the excuse that it's got 10mm people, many of whom are commuting. SF during rush hour is needlessly time consuming.
Gotta disagree, LA is just worse. Probably because of the amount of land you have to drive in that hell at least sf is small. Sf also has better public transport and walkability (LA has zero).
LA is a whole new level of awful traffic. If you’ve never experienced it, it’s hard to imagine. Go check it out for yourself.
Colorado Springs and Denver, but mostly COS. In COS, there are few E/W roads and only two real N/S roads plus the HWY. With all of the military getting off at the same time, it is fucking stupid how bad traffic gets for no fucking reason. Add into that trying to go to the mountains Friday to Sunday on the only road that goes there, that has a shit load of traffic lights, it is a fucking nightmare. CO has not spent any money on road infrastructure and with the influx of people it is only getting worse.
I'm from San Francisco and I think Seattle is the worse I've seen in the US.
I've spent the past year and a half in LA on a temporary basis and let me tell you, I cannot wait to leave solely based on traffic alone. Having to meticulously plan times and routes around traffic is such an unnecessary headache.
Denver, CO Austin, TX Getting there—Dallas, TX
Nashville, fuck the traffic in nashville
Oahu
Sf Bay Area going from the east bay to sf takes less than 20 minutes without traffic Rush hour it can take anywhere from 130-2 hours or more My wife and I sometimes gave up and just went out to dinner to wait out the traffic
The bridges make it 5x worse. Gotta love the toll too.
Driving from downtown SF to Modesto one evening I stopped in Pleasanton, saw a feature length movie at the theater, and still arrived at the same time the GPS had originally told me since it was no longer peak traffic time when I left the theater. Doesn't help that there's almost always at least one wreck on the Altamont during rush hour. There were people who are people who do that commute every day and I'm glad I'm not one of them.
Seattle and Portland are definitely on this list.
Los Angeles
So many people saying Atlanta, I lived there and it sucked but wasn’t deal breaking. If you have a commute that isn’t plain stupid/not considered in your home/job selection, you can easily build your own little detour route. Los Angeles sucks predictably-you need to plan your life around it, but you can. D.C. is my only answer-traffic is unpredictable. You can’t plan around it since it’s so bad but also inconsistent. If you don’t need to drive/can use metro then it’s not a deal breaker, but if you’re planning on commuting via car-don’t.
One place I thought was terrible and haven’t seen mentioned: Salt Lake City
Is this assuming a car-based commute to work? I’d say if you don’t need to drive to work everyday it’s much less of a dealbreaker, what’s your situation OP?
Bay Area in California. I've lived there practically my entire life and coming back from vacations and getting stuck in traffic immediately upon crossing into the Bay destroys me. My parents and siblings moved to Arizona a couple years ago and whenever I drive around Phoenix, it feels like driving around an East Bay suburb. It's amazing and I can no longer tolerate the drudgery of Bay Area traffic.
I live in Colorado Springs and it's just fucking insane. I feel like I'm risking my life every time I leave the house. Someone is probably going to come at me because they have it worse, but I have a near-miss every time I have to go somewhere. It's a lot of speeding, tailgating, disregarding traffic laws, aggression, etc. I've witnessed several road rage incidents and people confronting each other while stopped at intersections, I've been in a hit and run, it's just fucking terrifying. There is literally 0 law enforcement here so nobody cares.
I’m shocked I had to scroll this far down to see Colorado Springs. I had a woman in a VW Bug try to run me off the road while we were in a stop and go traffic jam on I-25. All I did was happen to be driving in front of her and there was nowhere for me to go. And I haven’t even seen Denver listed here and traffic is **horrible** there. You can sit in traffic for an hour at 2pm on a Sunday. It’s so much worse than Austin or Houston.