Long commute times were part of life in many large cities for decades before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country hard in March 2020. Studies of commutes sometimes use days in traffic per year rather than hours. Heavy rush hour traffic has returned. It has gotten so bad in New York City that it will add $15 a day to the cost of coming into parts of Manhattan. This will be added to current tolls. In theory, people will be less likely to drive and instead take buses, subways, and trains to save money. Maybe.
A new study shows the average commute time, round trip per day, in the world’s largest cities. New York City has the longest commute time at 1 hour and 56 minutes. It is about 21 hours a year, the equivalent of a full day in traffic. (See each state’s city with the worst traffic.)
New York is tied with Bangkok, Thailand. The nation’s capital has about 10.5 million residents. According to the Bangkok Post, the congestion causes an additional problem: “Not only are road users affected by crawling traffic and long hours trapped in cars, but pedestrians have to breathe polluted air from vehicles while walking on sidewalks that are more like afterthoughts.”
Several other large U.S. cities have commute times of approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes or longer. These are the cities worldwide with the longest commutes.
- New York (1 hr 56 m)
- Bangkok (1 hr 56 m)
- Chicago (1 hr 53 m)
- Washington (1 hr 53 m)
- Toronto (1 hr 52 m)
- Boston (1 hr 46 m)
- Melbourne (1 hr 46 m)
- Los Angeles (1 hr 44 m)
- Paris (1 hr 44 m)
- San Francisco (1 hr 44 m)
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