No metro area in America with more than 3 million people has better traffic than the Motor City, according to INRIX
Detroit traffic can be a pain. Especially when there are massive highway construction projects.
But metro Detroiters can take comfort in at least one thing: Every major metropolitan area of its size (or larger) in the United States has it worse. In some cases, much worse.
INRIX has unveiled its 2016 Global Traffic Scorecard, a ranking of 1,064 cities studied by the traffic analytics firm, and determined that Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the world.
Meanwhile, Detroit ranks 128th in the world and 24th among cities in the United States. And while both rankings may seem high, the Motor City actually fares quite well compared to major metropolitan areas in the United States of similar size.
Rounding out the Top 10, after Los Angeles: New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, Washington D.C., Dallas, Boston, Chicago and Seattle. Other cities with worse traffic than Detroit, according to the study, include Houston, San Diego, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Phoenix.
In fact, no major metropolitan area with more than 3 million people – as of the 2015 estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau – has better traffic than Detroit, according to INRIX. The largest American metro area with a better traffic scorecard is Tampa, Fla., which shares a statistical area with St. Petersburg and Clearwater and has more than 1 million fewer people than metro Detroit.
In Detroit, drivers spent on average 6% of their time in congested traffic in 2016, with an average of 33.5 peak hours spent in congestion, Most of the congested traffic hours took place during the day when drivers are traveling in and out of Detroit (rush hour times). Detroit fares the best perhaps in in-and-out traffic around noontime and in-and-out traffic late at night.
Compare those numbers to, say, Los Angeles, where drivers spend on average 13% of their time in congested traffic and an average of 104.1 peak hours spent in congestion in 2016.
Granted, Detroit has some obstacles to deal with over the next several years, including a 2-year shutdown of southbound I-75 at the Rouge River bridge. There’s also a massive $1-billion I-75 reconstruction taking place in Oakland County over the next 14 years.
That said, for a city of this size without a mass transit system, Detroit’s ranking is actually quite impressive. Last year, Detroit ranked 194th in the world on the Global Traffic Scorecard.
Other Michigan cities on the Global Traffic Scorecard include:
- Ann Arbor (257th overall, 40th in U.S.)
- Grand Rapids (578th overall, 89th in U.S.)
- Lansing (783rd overall, 141st in U.S.)
- Flint (825th overall, 160th in U.S.)
- Saginaw (962nd overall, 210th in U.S.)
- Kalamazoo (1,006th overall, 223rd in U.S.)
