The Worst Commute Time in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 24, 8:25AM EDT

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The Worst Commute Time in America — © Kichigin / iStock via Getty Images

In some big cities, before the COVID-19 pandemic, it would take hours to make a round trip into the city during rush hours. Some people took trains and buses instead. But a hard core of drivers remained, sitting in their cars, paying tolls, burning gasoline and listening to the radio and podcasts. The pandemic briefly emptied cities and sharply cut commute times. Some people decided to work from home and will never be commuters again. For many people, though, the long commute is back. Which city has the worst commute time in America?

The average one-way commute time has not entirely returned to 2019 levels. It reached 28.7 minutes that year. That dropped to 25.6 minutes during the pandemic but rose to 26.4 minutes last year. (Each state’s city with the worst traffic.)

According to Yardi Kube:

While remote work has definitely left its mark on commuting, as many people gave up the idea of going to work completely when they made a switch from an office to an at-home workspace during the pandemic, others are either required or simply prefer to embrace the return to the office initiative that started happening once the major threats of the COVID-19 pandemic began to diminish.

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New York City has the longest and worst commute time: over 40 minutes one way. It is the largest city in America by far, with 8.8 million residents. The third largest city, Chicago, has the second largest commute at more than 33 minutes.
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These are the cities with the longest commute times:

New York (40.7 minutes)
Chicago (33.5)
Philadelphia (31.5)
Boston (30.5)
Los Angeles (30.2)
Washington (30.1)
Oakland (29.6)
San Francisco (29.5)
Long Beach (29.4)
Miami (29.0)

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.