Being stuck in traffic anywhere sucks. Even if it’s just for a few minutes, feelings of urgency and anger sneak in quickly. Now, imagine being stuck in traffic multiple hours a day, five days a week. For some people, it’s a way of life. To figure out who has the worst commute in the nation, the Daily Beast studied and quantified the Top 20 Worst Commutes in America.
Factors that went into the list included length of the traffic corridor, longest rush hour travel time along that stretch of road and the time it takes to drive a mile along that stretch during the highest-volume rush hour. They also calculated how much worse a stretch of road is during its worst rush-hour period versus normal driving. California’s Delta Highway/CA-4 took that honor handily, taking 318 percent longer to travel during rush times.
The data was gathered from GPS and smartphone tracking of four million vehicles by a company called INRIX, which the Daily Beast compiled into the top 20 list. Now, without further ado, the top 20 worst commutes in the nation:
1. Riverside Freeway/Calif. Highway 91 eastbound, Los Angeles
2. Lunalilo Freeway/I-1 eastbound, Honolulu
3. California Delta Highway/Calif. Highway 4 westbound, San Francisco
4. I-95 southbound, Washington, D.C.
5. Bruckner/Cross Bronx Expressways (I-95 southbound), New York
6. I-35 southbound, Austin-Round Rock
7. Connecticut Turnpike (I-95 northbound), Bridgeport8. I-405 southbound, Seattle
9. Bayshore Freeway (U.S. 101 southbound), San Jose, Calif.
10. Kennedy/Dan Ryan Expressways (I-90/I-94 eastbound), Chicago
11. I-5 northbound, Portland, Ore.
12. Calif. Highway 78 eastbound, San Diego
13. I-494 eastbound, Minneapolis
14. Southwest/Eastex Freeways (U.S. 59 northbound), Houston
15. Southeast Expressway (I-93 northbound), Boston
16. Hampton Roads Beltway (I-64 westbound), Virginia Beach, Va.
17. Baltimore Beltway Inner Loop (I-695 eastbound), Baltimore
18. Schuylkill Expressway (I-76 westbound), Philadelphia
19. North Freeway (I-35W northbound), Dallas
20. Ventura Freeway (U.S. 101 northbound), Oxnard, Calif
[Source: The Daily Beast via Kicking Tires | Image: gohsuket – CC 2.0]