For years, drivers have traded stories about the most miserable commute in America, but a new data set has turned that daily frustration into a clear ranking. A fresh national analysis of gridlock now points to one city as the country’s congestion capital, with drivers there losing more time and money to traffic than anywhere else in the United States. I set out to unpack what that finding really means, why this city has surged to the top of the list, and what it reveals about how Americans move, work, and plan their days.
The result is not the usual coastal suspect. According to the latest nationwide traffic scorecards, Chicago has overtaken rivals like Los Angeles and New York City to claim the unwelcome distinction of having the worst traffic in the country, a shift that reflects deeper changes in commuting patterns, infrastructure strain, and the economic cost of delay.
How Chicago ended up at the top of the traffic rankings
The new rankings are built on years of detailed driving data, and they leave little doubt about which city now sits at the bottom of the congestion barrel. Per the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard, analysts compared multiple years of travel speeds, trip lengths, and delay times to determine which urban areas impose the heaviest burden on drivers, and that work shows that Chicago has climbed into the number one spot for gridlock in the United States. One recent breakdown of the findings notes that, per the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard, the study used multiple years of past driving data to determine the cities with the worst congestion, and that Chicago’s rise has been discussed and analyzed for years as the data has accumulated, a sign that this is not a one year fluke but a trend that has been building over time, as highlighted in a detailed look at how Per the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard reshaped the national pecking order.
What makes this shift especially striking is that Chicago has leapfrogged cities that once seemed synonymous with gridlock. Another analysis of the same INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard underscores that Chicago now has the worst traffic in the entire United States, a change that reflects how its expressways, arterial streets, and aging interchanges have struggled to absorb post pandemic travel patterns. That report emphasizes that the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard is not a snapshot but a multi year assessment of congestion, which means Chicago’s new status is rooted in sustained delays rather than a short term spike, a point reinforced in a closer look at how The INRIX Global Traff data set has tracked the city’s worsening traffic over time.
Chicago’s congestion by the numbers
To understand what “worst traffic” really means for daily life, it helps to look at the hours drivers are losing behind the wheel. One national review of the INRIX data finds that U.S. drivers lost 49 hours to congestion, more than a full work week, and that within that national picture, Chicago stands out as the U.S. city with the worst traffic, rising from the number 2 position last year to become the most congested city in the country. That same analysis notes that Chicago’s jump to the top of the list came even as some other cities saw their congestion hold steady, underscoring how quickly gridlock has intensified there, a pattern captured in the finding that the U.S. city with the worst traffic is now Rising Chicago rather than a coastal metropolis.
Other breakdowns of the same data set show how those lost hours translate into economic pain. A detailed list of the 25 U.S. cities with the worst traffic explains that the company behind the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard calculated the economic costs of congestion based on hourly values of time from the U.S. Federal Highway Admi, turning delay minutes into dollar figures that capture lost productivity, wasted fuel, and added wear on vehicles. In that ranking, Chicago appears alongside other heavily congested metros, but its top position means its drivers shoulder the highest combined burden of delay and cost, a reality that becomes clear when the methodology based on the U.S. Federal Highway Admi is applied to the city’s daily traffic jams.
Why Chicago’s roads are so jammed
Chicago’s new status at the top of the congestion rankings is not just a matter of more cars; it is also a story about infrastructure that has not kept up with how people live and work. Expert commentary on the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard points to the way Chicago’s core highway network, much of it built in the 1950s, was designed for a very different era of commuting and land use. In a widely shared analysis of Chicago’s worsening congestion, transportation specialists argue that the city’s expressways and arterial roads are constrained by aging designs, tight rights of way, and interchanges that were never meant to handle today’s volumes, a problem that has become more visible as traffic has rebounded and then surpassed pre pandemic levels, as explained in a segment on Chicago Traffic Worsens and the limits of systems built in the 1950s.
Land use and geography compound those structural constraints. Chicago’s role as a freight hub, its dense downtown job core, and its network of radial expressways funnel a huge share of regional trips through a relatively small set of chokepoints. Analysts who have examined the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard note that this combination of heavy commuter flows and intense truck traffic magnifies the impact of even minor incidents, turning routine slowdowns into long backups. The city’s flat topography and lakefront boundaries leave limited room for new corridors, so congestion tends to stack up on the same stretches of road day after day, a pattern that helps explain why Chicago has emerged as the country’s most gridlocked urban area.
How Chicago overtook New York, Los Angeles, and other rivals
For decades, the shorthand for terrible traffic in America has been Los Angeles freeways or New York City bridges, but the latest congestion rankings show a different hierarchy. A recent breakdown of the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard makes clear that Chicago has the worst traffic in America, and that it now outranks both New York City and Los Angeles in measures of delay and congestion intensity. That analysis stresses that the U.S. city with the worst traffic is not LA or New York City, but Chicago, a reversal of long standing assumptions about which metros impose the harshest commute on their residents, a shift captured in the finding that The US city with the worst traffic revealed is Chicago, not the coastal giants.
Other national lists of congested cities reinforce that story by showing how Chicago’s ranking has changed relative to its peers. A comprehensive rundown of the 25 U.S. cities with the worst traffic notes that New York and Philadelphia ranked high on the list, but that Chicago’s combination of delay hours and congestion intensity pushed it to the top when cities were ordered by the amount of congestion. That same analysis explains that the company behind the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard used a consistent methodology across metros, which means Chicago’s number one position reflects a genuine shift in relative performance rather than a change in how the data was collected, a point underscored when New York and Philadelphia are listed alongside Chicago in the ranking of cities by the amount of congestion, in order, within the These 25 US cities overview.
The human cost: hours lost and lives rearranged
Behind every congestion statistic is a driver watching the clock, and the new rankings quantify just how much of life is being spent in traffic. One national report on the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard highlights that drivers across the country lose dozens of hours to congestion each year, and that some cities impose far heavier burdens than others. In a story by Cassandra Buchman, the analysis spells out how drivers in the hardest hit metros see their commutes stretch far beyond what maps would suggest, with those in the worst ranked city losing a particularly punishing share of their time to gridlock, a reality captured in the finding that Drivers lose dozens of hours to traffic congestion in the metros that have it worst.
For Chicagoans, those lost hours reshape everything from childcare pickups to shift schedules. When a commute that should take 25 minutes routinely stretches past an hour, workers adjust by leaving home earlier, staying later, or avoiding certain routes altogether, often at the expense of family time or rest. The INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard’s translation of delay into economic cost, using hourly values of time from the U.S. Federal Highway Admi, underscores that this is not just an annoyance but a drag on household budgets and local economies. In the city that now tops the congestion rankings, that drag is felt most acutely by those who have the least flexibility in their schedules, a group that includes service workers, delivery drivers, and caregivers whose days are tightly choreographed around the very peak periods when traffic is worst.
What the rankings say about post‑pandemic commuting
Chicago’s surge to the top of the congestion list also reflects how commuting has evolved in the wake of the pandemic. Analysts who have parsed the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard note that while remote work has reduced traditional five day office commutes in some sectors, it has also led to more varied travel patterns, with mid day trips, hybrid schedules, and new residential clusters that strain different parts of the road network. In Chicago, that has meant heavier use of certain expressway segments outside the old rush hour peaks, as well as more cross town driving that bypasses the central business district but still clogs key arterials, a pattern that helps explain why the city’s overall congestion has intensified even as some downtown corridors see more uneven flows.
Nationally, the same data set shows that U.S. drivers lost 49 hours to congestion, more than a full work week, which suggests that whatever relief people might have expected from remote work has been offset by other forms of travel. In Chicago, where the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard now records the highest congestion burden in the country, that reality is visible in the way traffic backs up not only on weekday mornings but on weekends, evenings, and around major event venues. The city’s new number one ranking is therefore not just a story about office commutes returning, but about a broader reshaping of how and when people move, and how an aging road system struggles to accommodate that complexity.
How Chicago compares to other hard‑hit cities
Chicago may now sit at the top of the congestion rankings, but it is far from alone in facing severe traffic challenges. The list of cities where drivers lose dozens of hours to congestion includes a mix of coastal hubs, Sun Belt boomtowns, and older industrial metros, each with its own blend of highway design, transit options, and land use patterns. In the national overview that highlights how drivers lose dozens of hours to traffic congestion and identifies the cities that have it worst, Chicago appears alongside other major metros that have struggled to align growth with transportation capacity, a reminder that the forces driving gridlock are national in scope even if they play out differently on the ground.
What sets Chicago apart, according to the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard and the analyses built on it, is the intensity and persistence of its delays across multiple corridors and times of day. While some cities see congestion concentrated in a handful of notorious bottlenecks, Chicago’s network of expressways, river crossings, and suburban arterials spreads the pain across a wider geography. That breadth helps explain why the city has overtaken New York City and Los Angeles in the latest rankings, and why its drivers now bear the heaviest combined burden of lost hours and economic cost among U.S. metros tracked in the scorecard.
What it will take to move Chicago off the top spot
Being labeled the most congested city in the United States is not a title any mayor wants to keep, and the new rankings raise urgent questions about what it would take to move Chicago down the list. Transportation experts who have examined the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard argue that the city’s 1950s era highway systems cannot simply be widened indefinitely, both because of physical constraints and because induced demand tends to fill new lanes quickly. Instead, they point to a mix of strategies, including modernizing key interchanges, improving transit reliability, and redesigning surface streets to move buses and high occupancy vehicles more efficiently, an approach that aligns with the broader critique that Chicago’s traffic problems are rooted in systems built in the 1950s that no longer match today’s travel patterns, as highlighted in the discussion of Expert Analysis and solutions.
Any serious response will also have to grapple with the economic stakes quantified in the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard. Because the company translates delay into dollar costs using hourly values of time from the U.S. Federal Highway Admi, Chicago’s top ranking implies a particularly large drag on regional productivity. That reality strengthens the case for investments that might once have seemed politically difficult, from congestion pricing on the most overburdened corridors to targeted freight management strategies that shift truck traffic away from peak commuter periods. If Chicago is to shed its new reputation as the country’s congestion capital, it will need to treat those lost hours not as an inevitable annoyance but as a solvable problem with clear economic and quality of life benefits.
More from MorningOverview
