One huge traffic jam: New York is ranked as the worst city for motorists in the United States

A new study found that the number of traffic jams in New York is much higher than in other cities in the country - for the first time in nearly forty years, New York bypassed Los Angeles, California, where the roads are always clogged with cars. Gothamist.

According to the annual mobility report released this week by the Texas Transportation Institute, the average New York City driver spent 2020 hours in traffic in 56. Overall, motorists in the region spent a whopping 494 hours in traffic, nearly 268% more than any other city in the country.

Although not every family owns a car in New York City, the city currently leads in all traffic congestion metrics monitored by the Transportation Institute. Perhaps the most telling example is that New York City, from 14th in 2019, moved up to number one in the stress index among suburban motorists working in the city.

New York's sharp shift in the rankings reflects the uneven impact of the pandemic on public transportation use across the country. The study found that traffic in many cities fell by two-thirds last year, while in New York it fell by less than half. By October 2020, metropolitan traffic had reached dock levels, even though only 10% of employees returned to work in offices in Manhattan.

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According to study co-author David Shrank, there are many reasons why New York ranked the worst in the ranking, including the very active truck traffic moving goods from the ports of New York and New Jersey at the height of the quarantine. But the most obvious explanation may be what was already known: due to the pandemic, many New Yorkers returned to personal vehicles, abandoning public ones, where the risk of infection was much higher.

“People didn't want to use public transport,” Shrank said. - Many people who had to work changed their habits. If they could not walk or ride a bicycle, they used their own vehicles to get to work. ”

It remains unclear whether these habits will remain after the pandemic. Even before COVID, New York City's roads were heavily clogged, in part due to the large number of rented vehicles.

Many human rights activists accuse Mayor Bill de Blasio of not doing anything to change the situation. After appointing experts to the Land Transport Advisory Council last summer, they said, the administration ignored their recommendations to reduce vehicle traffic and effectively disbanded the group.

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The city's congested road toll program, which was originally scheduled to begin in January this year, also remains in limbo despite being approved by the state more than two years ago.

“The fact that our roads are more congested than in Los Angeles, where the car is king of the road (Los Angeles has a poorly developed public transportation system - editor's note.) Indicates that New York's leaders favor cars, not people, ”said Danny Harris, chief executive of Transportation Alternatives. "It's a predictable failure that could have been prevented."