NYC Is Not World's Most Traffic Congested City, But It's Close

NEW YORK, NY — As bad as the subways are, driving is still a headache. New York City is the third-most gridlocked city in the world, with the average driver spending 91 hours stuck in traffic last year, according to a new study published Monday.

The Big Apple is only behind Moscow (No. 2) and Los Angeles (No. 1) on Inrix's 2017 Global Congestion Scorecard. The transportation analytics firm measured traffic data from more than 1,300 cities to determine how much time drivers waste stuck in traffic.

New York is second only to Los Angeles among North American cities when it comes to terrible traffic. City drivers spend 13 percent of their time in a car stuck in congestion, Inrix found. The same figure for Los Angeles is 12 percent, but the average driver there spent 102 hours trapped in gridlock last year.

The congestion comes with a price. Traffic cost New York City nearly $34 billion last year — nearly $3,000 per driver — in wasted time, fuel and traffic-related fees, Inrix found. That's the biggest economic toll of any U.S. city by far.

The five boroughs are also home to four of the 10 most congested roadways in the U.S. The Cross-Bronx Expressway topped that list for the third straight year. The average driver wasted 118 hours traversing the 4.7 miles between the Alexander Hamilton Bridge and the Bruckner Expressway, a 37 percent increase over 2016.

Drivers spent an average of 59 hours stuck on East 34th Street between the FDR Drive and Fifth Avenue, the seventh-worst road in America. The Belt Parkway in Brooklyn and Queens ranked eighth, and East 42nd Street between FDR Drive and Seventh Avenue ranked ninth.

Inrix published its study amid a statewide debate over a congestion pricing scheme for New York City. A commission impaneled by Gov. Andrew Cuomo recommended tolling cars to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, along with other measures, to improve traffic in the city's center and fund repairs to the subway system.

While New York may be particularly bad, traffic in the U.S. is better than several other countries, Inrix found. The nation tied with Russia for fifth in the world for the worst traffic congestion, falling behind Thailand, Indonesia, Colombia and Venezuela.

Here's the top 25 worst cities for traffic in the world, according to Inrix:

1. Los Angeles
2. Moscow, Russia
3. New York City
4. Sao Paulo, Brazil
5. San Francisco
6. Bogota, Colombia
7. London
8. Atlanta
9. Paris
10. Miami
11. Bangkok, Thailand
12. Jakarta, Indonesia
13. Washington, D.C.
14. Boston
15. Istanbul, Turkey
16. Mexico City, Mexico
17. Chicago
18. Medellin, Colombia
19. Krasnodar, Russia
20. Seattle
21. Saint Petersburg, Russia
22. Dallas
23. Zurich, Switzerland
24. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
25. Munich, Germany

(Lead image: Traffic moves along 42nd Street in Manhattan, one of the nation's most-congested streets, on Jan. 25. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)