Where’s the Worst Rush-Hour Traffic?

Let’s hope your car has a comfortable interior, a dream audio system and a cup holder that’s large enough to manage a Big Gulp if you live in Los Angeles. That’s because commuters in the City of Angels suffer the most punishing evening rush hour congestion in the nation, according to the annual traffic index conducted by navigation system maker TomTom in Burlington, Massachusetts. To put that in perspective, a drive through L.A. that might otherwise take as little as 30 minutes will take 54 minutes during a typical trip home, when the level of congestion stands at 80 percent. That’s a total of 207 hours wasted over the course of a year sitting in traffic. The runners up (and their congestion levels during the nighttime rush) include: San Jose (75 percent); Seattle (74 percent); Honolulu (68 percent); Houston (68 percent); San Francisco (68 percent); Portland (61 percent); Austin (61 percent); Atlanta (59 percent); and Chicago (59 percent).