- Miami ranks 9th worldwide and 5th in the US for worst overall traffic, with average delays of 105 hours in 2022, a 59% increase from 2021 and 30% more than pre-COVID levels.
- Orlando has two traffic corridors ranked 10th and 24th worst in the nation, with drivers losing 17 and 13 minutes during peak rush hour, respectively.
- The typical American driver lost 51 hours to traffic congestion in 2022, up 15 hours from 2021, costing the nation $81 billion, despite a $7 billion decrease from 2019.
Florida cities are facing increased traffic congestion, with Miami ranking 9th worldwide for cities with the worst traffic in the 2022 INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, a notable jump from its 32nd position in 2021. Miami drivers experienced an average delay of 105 hours in 2022, a 59 percent increase from the previous year, and 30 percent more than pre-COVID levels. The city also saw a 21 percent decrease in downtown speed, which now crawls along at just 15 mph.
In the United States, Miami ranked 5th among cities with the worst traffic, with a total citywide cost attributed to delays of $4.5 billion and an individual driver cost of $1,773. Comparatively, the worst US cities with high congestion levels included Chicago (155 hours lost), Boston (134), New York (117), and Los Angeles (95). Both Chicago and Miami have more traffic congestion and delays than they did pre-COVID, while Boston, New York, and Los Angeles still lag behind 2019 levels.
Though Orlando didn’t make the worldwide nor national list for overall worst traffic, the tourism mecca has two specific traffic corridors rankedamong the worst in the nation. The 10th worst national corridor is I-4 Eastbound between Exit 72 at FL-528 and Exit 60 at the FL-429 Toll, where drivers lose an average of 17 minutes during the peak 5 pm rush hour. Over the course of a full year, the typical Orlando commuter using that route will spend almost three full days (70 hours) more than a non-delayed commuter.
The state’s second worst traffic corridor (24th worst in the nation) is Orlando’s John Young Parkway Southbound between Vine Street and Pleasant Hill Road, where drivers lose an average of 13 minutes at the peak of the 5 pm rush hour. In 2022, the typical rush hour driver on that stretch of John Young Parkway would sit in traffic for an extra two days and four hours (52 hours total), compared with a normal, non-delayed driving commute every year.
Worldwide, London, Chicago, and Paris remain the top three cities in terms of hours lost due to traffic congestion, with 156, 155, and 138 hours lost respectively. In comparison, cities like Bogota, Boston, Miami, and Toronto saw double-digit increases over 2021, moving up significantly from their previous positions.
According to the report, the typical American driver lost 51 hours to traffic congestion in 2022, up 15 hours from 2021. The cost of these delays increased from $53 billion in 2021 to $81 billion in 2022, a 53% increase. Although the cost of nationwide congestion is down $7 billion from 2019’s high of $88 billion, fuel costs have risen 32%, and collisions have increased by 4%.
And a 9 year $3B project just completed in early 2022 that was supposed to ease traffic on that section of i4 in Orlando and it only made it worse. The cause of the traffic on John Young Parkway could easily be fixed by better timed lights. Considering that Orlando is a land-locked flat city with endless possibilities for infrastructure design (other than a few small lakes), it makes the congestion all the more frustrating. Orange County and Osceola County have the most incompetent traffic engineers in the country.
Florida has all of these nagging problems and they’re getting worse every year…so my question is: why do people think that Govenor DeSantis is such a great Govenor?
Hah who says he’s great? We definitely don’t all think that!
In Miami almost every traffic light is 3 minutes. That’s just stupid. Should be 1 minute green and 1 minute red. You get people at a red light for 3 minutes. What’s the first thing they do? pick up their cell phones. Then the light finally turns green and drivers are staring at their cell phones
Build it and they will come? Forgot about road building to keep up with the masses moving south. Never will they catch up and expect we the people to pay for improvements not the builders of subdivisions, they get years of tax breaks???
I live in Lakeland which used to be 45 mins to Orlando .. I am not renewing my Universal season pass because it now takes between 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs to get there … An 18 minute delay according to this report is not accurate.. it’s much worse
So very true Champions Gate is the worst
Perhaps if people from other states would quit moving to Florida..it would be less congested. I would prefer to pay state income tax just so people wouldn’t move here..and the majority of these tourists are old and are terrible drivers.
With all the “development” and “growth”, traffic is a nightmare all over. St Augustine is a nightmare