If you feel like you’ve been spending more time in traffic in the Seattle area than in recent years, you’re not imagining it. Not only was the national average amount of time spent in traffic at an all-time high in 2024, but Seattle drivers spent even more hours driving at congested speeds. Read on for all the details.
The average Seattle-area driver spent 87 hours stuck in traffic last year, according to a new report. That’s 10 hours more than in 2019. It’s also 24 hours more than the nationwide average. The average U.S. car commuter spent 63 hours annually stuck in traffic in 2024, which is the most amount of time since this data started being collected in 1982.
This data put Seattle in the top 10 ranking for traffic in 2024. Only eight U.S. metros saw its residents spending more time in traffic last year than Seattle. The cities with traffic times worse than Seattle included Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. See the ranking of the top 10 U.S. urban areas with the worst traffic delays in 2024 below, featuring the number of hours the average driver spent in congestion that year.
- Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Anaheim, CA: 137 hours
- San Francisco and Oakland, CA: 134 hours
- New York, NY and Newark, NJ: 99 hours
- Riverside and San Bernardino, CA: 95 hours
- San Jose, CA: 94 hours
- Miami, FL: 93 hours
- Washington, DC: 90 hours
- San Diego, CA: 88 hours
- Seattle, Chicago, and Atlanta (tied): 87 hours
- Nashville, TN: 83 hours
This list provides an important takeaway. The next time you find yourself stuck in Seattle traffic, remind yourself that it could be worse. You could be stuck in California traffic.
These findings come from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s 2025 Urban Mobility Report. The report analyzed over 300 areas that had populations beyond 100,000. They used data from the Federal Highway Administration and INRIX, a transportation analytics firm. To see all of the information included, you can view the full Urban Mobility Report here.