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Palmtop Software was founded in Amsterdam in 1991 with the goal of making digital maps and navigation easily accessible. In 2003 they changed their name to TomTom, and have stuck with it ever since. The company told The Guardian in 2011 that they had wanted to rebrand as “a character, a friend, a local that will help you find your way.” The name Tom won out, but couldn’t be trademarked, so they just doubled it. I feel like there’s a golden life lesson somewhere in this anecdote, but I’m struggling to articulate anything more than the fortune cookie-sounding “double your name and you will succeed.” In any event, TomTom has released their 2023 Traffic Index, a comprehensive accounting of city traffic based on varying factors. Their analysis yielded a list of the top 10 US cities with the worst traffic, and the Big Apple took the cake:
Most agree that sitting in traffic is a massive waste of time, and often cite a frustrating commute to and from work as reason to resist returning to the office. But experts say that congestion is a sign of a good economy because it shows people are going out and likely spending money.
In January, geolocation technology specialist TomTom released its annual Traffic Index for 2023.
The ranking includes the U.S. cities with the worst traffic, and was calculated by assessing the time, cost, and CO2 emission per mile driven and simulating how long it takes to complete a six-mile trip within a city for typical E.V., petrol and diesel cars.
California is the only state that had two cities rank in the top 10: San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The latter is notorious for its bad traffic but still came in way down at the No. 9 spot, while the Bay Area city landed in the top three.
New York City is No. 1 on the list of cities with the worst traffic in America. The TomTom report found that, on average, commuters in the heart of the Big Apple spent 24 minutes and 50 seconds driving about six miles in 2023, a 20-second increase over 2022.
The city also ranked as the most congested in the U.S. in a separate TomTom ranking. On average, drivers lost 8 minutes and 2 seconds for a six-mile trip due to traffic. Commuters in New York also lose the most time in rush-hour traffic jams, with an average of one hour to make a typical six-minute trip.
Top 10 U.S. cities with the worst traffic:
1. New York City
2. Washington, D.C.
3. San Francisco
4. Boston
5. Chicago
6. Baltimore
7. Seattle
8. Philadelphia
9. Los Angeles
10. Miami
TomTom’s results seem pretty straight forward, except for that claim that congestion = people spending money. That one is a stretch. But as for the top 10, none of those cities were surprising. And I must say, I’m kvelling over the city of my birth/childhood (San Francisco) and the city of my adulthood (New York) both making the top three. Just to support these results, I can report that I did not learn how to drive until I was 25. No thank you. I was the rare teen who had no interest in getting behind the wheel (helped by the fact that I could walk to my high school), and New York’s bus and subway systems are extensive and can get you anywhere. When they’re working, that is. My absolute favorite alert on the MTA app is when they say a line is experiencing delays because “we’re running as much service as we can with the train crews we have available.” I wonder if the MTA enjoys the irony of throwing their own employees under the proverbial bus.
Photos credit: Alex Azabache, Craig Adderley, Ketut Subiyanto and Noriely Fernandez on Pexels, Joshua Wordel and Maria Oswalt on Unsplash
