INRIX, a transportation analytics company, released its 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard, ranking the most congested cities in America. To determine the ranking, the company measured changes in average peak-period travel times from 2023 through Q3 of 2025.
The report found that the typical U.S. driver lost 49 hours to traffic congestion, an 11% increase from 2024. That’s more than a full work week and amounts to $894 in lost time per driver.
Congestion cost the U.S. around 4.7 billion hours due to traffic last year, or nearly $86 billion in lost time.
“Congestion is going up and the infrastructure struggles to keep up,” Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst at INRIX, tells CNBC Make It. “When the road system doesn’t meet the demand, that’s when we get traffic congestion.”
According to the latest data from the Federal Highway Administration, travel for October was estimated at 290.0 billion vehicle miles, which Pischue says is a record, showing that people are getting back on the road, in turn driving up congestion.
“With congestion, once you get to a certain point, the more people you add into the system, the impact is exponential, and it’s not linear,” says Ahmed Darrat, Chief Product Officer at INRIX.
“We’re getting back to pre-Covid-19 levels. There’s a lot of activity happening much closer to what it looked like in 2019 than what we were seeing between 2023 and 2024.”
For cities to better address congestion, Pischue says they need to do two things. First, they need to realize the new normal, which is close to, if not already at, pre-pandemic levels. Then, they need to adjust the transportation system accordingly.
“It’s tough to change transit routes because people depend on them a lot, right? But transit also has to capture more ridership. It’s always a push and pull,” he says.
The U.S. city with the worst traffic: Chicago
Rising from the No. 2 last year, Chicago is now the most congested city in the U.S., according to INRIX. The Windy City ranked No. 2 globally, below Istanbul, Turkey.
Chicago
Iryna Olkhova | Istock | Getty Images
Drivers in Chicago lost 112 hours to traffic jams, compared to 102 in 2024. These delays cost the average driver $2,063 and the city $7.5 billion, according to the INRIX report.
The U.S. saw an 11% increase in the hours drivers lost, so Chicago grew in line with the rest of the country, Pischue says.
“Chicago has a funky geography because one direction is completely blocked off by water. Because of water, it’s just going to have transportation challenges,” he adds.
Top 10 U.S. cities with the worst traffic
New York City ranked in the top spot on INRIX’s list for the last two years, but fell to No. 2 in 2025. According to the report, there was no increase in congestion in the city this year.
In the global ranking, the Big Apple came in at No. 4 just below Mexico City.
Drivers in NYC lost 102 hours in 2025, the same as last year. These delays cost the average driver $1,879 and the city $9.7 billion, according to the INRIX report.
New York City saw its congestion increase pretty quickly after the Covid-19 pandemic, Pischue says.
“New York still has people using transit versus other cities. We still have a lot of people doing hybrid work, but congestion is almost as bad as when people were all commuting. It shows we still have people choosing to get out and drive miles. So they’re driving some more but commuting less,” he says.
New York City
Bernd Obermann | Corbis Documentary | Getty Images
New York City started addressing its congestion issues by introducing congestion pricing in 2024. Many drivers entering Manhattan’s congestion relief zone south of 60th street are charged a once-per-day toll of $9 during peak hours on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Overnight, the toll price drops to $2.25.
In February, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced that the congestion pricing toll had generated nearly $50 million in its first month. The program is on track to generate $500 million in net revenue by the end of the year, the MTA says.
Pischue says the new congestion pricing toll has had to affect congestion, but it’s not the biggest reason why it stayed the same this year.
Because the city saw congestion rise so quickly after the Covid-19 pandemic, it might have reached what Pischue calls a congestion plateau, where people are simply saying they don’t want to make a trip because traffic’s too bad.
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