The average motorist traversing Boston spent 79 hours stuck in traffic in 2024, according to an annual study from INRIX, a transportation analytics company. In 2023, that average driver lost 88 hours.
Still, Boston traffic is generally improving. Unless, that is, you’re heading south on I-93 after work.
In what will come as no surprise to any Boston driver: We’re still stuck in traffic. The city continues to rank in the top-five most congested cities in the United States and among the worst worldwide.
That 10 percent drop is the largest for any of the top 25 most congested American cities.
Some key factors, according to the Mass. Department of Transportation, include investments in infrastructure, such as optimized traffic signals and dedicated bus lines; public transit enhancements; more people choosing biking or walking; and folks adjusting their commuting schedules.
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“We’re encouraged by this progress, but know there’s still work to be done,” said State Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver.
Worldwide, congestion again edged closer to pre-pandemic levels as more than half of the urban areas studied experienced an increase in traffic — a trend driven, in part, by workers returning to the office. Istanbul, Mexico City, London, and Paris were among the most congested cities, according to the study.
In the US last year, the average worker lost 43 hours to traffic jams, the equivalent of a work week, INRIX found.
“Traffic can be an indicator of economic boon, but ironically, it’s a hamper on economies in of itself. Each minute spent waiting in traffic results in money and productivity lost,” said Bob Pishue, transportation analyst at INRIX and author of the report, which determined that $74 billion was lost to congestion nationwide.
For another year running, New York was the most congested city in the US, according to the scorecard, with the average New York commuter losing 102 hours, followed by Chicago drivers who also lost 102 hours, and Los Angeles motorists, who lost 88 hours. People behind the wheel in Boston came in fourth nationwide, the same position it was ranked by INRIX in 2023.
In Boston, congestion resulted in the average speed of a downtown trip crawling along at 13 miles per hour — the second-slowest in the country. The metro area also had the second-busiest corridor nationwide, I-93 Southbound. A driver traveling at 3 p.m. on the road stretching from Boston to Braintree every weekday would lose about 109 extra hours to traffic.
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Overall, the busiest corridor in the country was the I-95 Southbound in Connecticut heading into New York City. Authorities in New York are hoping the city’s new congestion pricing plan will help curb some of that, pushing more commuters out of their cars and onto the train. After Greater Boston’s I-93 bottleneck in second place, the next seven traffic hotspots were in New York, then five in Chicago, and four in Los Angeles.
While the report concluded that cities will likely continue to see traffic get worse, particularly as workers continue to return to the office, it also found increases in other modes of travel nationwide, including public transit by 6 percent, cycling by 4.2 percent, and driving by 2.3 percent.
Boston has seen a surge in residents commuting to work on bike, according to the study. But ridership on the subway remains well below pre-pandemic levels, according to MBTA data.
The average weekday subway ridership in December 2019 was 626,194 passengers; ridership in November 2024 was 363,588 riders, according to the T.
There has been measurable ridership gains on both the commuter rail and bus, but numbers remain slightly lower than 2019. The commuter rail does, however, lead the nation “in terms of return to ridership,” T general manager Phil Eng said at a November board of directors meeting.
Still, transit advocates are worried about that progress, with the T facing at least a $700 million operating budget gap. Getting more people out of their cars and onto public transportation would also help the state meet its climate goals.
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A transportation task force created by Governor Maura Healey failed to deliver a detailed financing plan by its Dec. 31 deadline. On Tuesday afternoon, members met for the final time, for a closed-door meeting, before the report is submitted. Both Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll attended.
Ahead of the meeting, Healey said during an interview on GBH’s Boston Public Radio that “people have kicked the can” down the road on transportation infrastructure funding for decades, adding that she believes they have the financial resources for “immediate stabilization” to confront the T’s “huge fiscal cliff.”
The task force, she said, “is not the end game … of the work that we’re looking to do when it comes to transportation.”
On the topic of congestion pricing, “I have talk to Governor Hochul about that,” Healey said. “I want to see how things are going in New York.”
Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.