“New Normal” of 10am to 4pm Hybrid Work While Congestion Grows Globally

Today INRIX launched the 2023 INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, our 18th annual release, including a Q1 2024 update. The Scorecard tracks, measures and analyzes traffic congestion in 947 urban areas worldwide, providing insights for road authorities, transportation engineers, policymakers, and the public.

Traffic congestion occurs when travel demand for roads exceeds the supply of available roadway. While typically viewed in a negative light, traffic congestion is an externality of economic growth and population movement. As more people and economic activity move into urban areas, it places strain on available road capacity, requiring intervention if there is a desire to ameliorate it.

Additionally, increased levels of traffic congestion mean more people, deliveries, employees, service workers and truckers, among others, losing time to traffic. It means more carbon emitted into the atmosphere, a reduction in air quality, and lost productivity and economic growth.

While congestion is one barometer of growth, it can also hinder it. Fewer on-time deliveries, fewer goods to market, and a shrinking labor pool are just some outcomes when the impact of traffic congestion hits a certain threshold. While cities, DOTs, road authorities and transit operators work within constrained budgets and red tape, maintenance backlogs grow and key transportation bottlenecks grow more intense.

Here are the key trends from this year's Global Traffic Scorecard:

Trip patterns reveal massive midday "10-4" peak continues. Travel patterns have continued to push toward a midday "new-normal," first noted by INRIX back in 2021, that shows morning peak periods have shed some traffic to the midday hours, indicating a more "hybrid work" commute pattern.

INRIX estimates that during the midday travel period, nearly 72 million trips occur per hour, up nearly 23% since 2019, while the evening peak has dropped -9% to 73 million trips per hour. The typical hour during the morning peak sees -12% fewer trips.

This should continue to be a key focus of DOT officials and road authorities. Whether adjusting signal timing, adjusting transit schedules or allocating incident response vehicles, the move from the morning peak hours to the midday provides an interesting opportunity reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions.

Traffic congestion continues to climb. 2023 saw increases in traffic congestion in 78% of the areas analyzed, fell in 19% and stayed the same in 3%. Yet despite the growth, just 54% of areas analyzed have reached their pre-COVID level of traffic congestion.

More Time and Economic Impact. The New York Urban Area tops the list, as the typical drivers lost 101 hours to traffic in 2023. This equates to $1,762 in lost time per driver, or $9.1 billion to the urban area. New York is followed by Mexico City (96 hours lost), London (99), Paris (97) and Chicago (96).

The typical U.S. driver lost 42 hours to congestion, equal to $733 per driver and $70.4 to the nation as a whole. U.K. drivers lost 61 hours on average, equal to £558 per driver and £7.5 billion nationally, and drivers in Germany lost 40 hours to traffic on average in 2023, equal to 427 € and 3.3 billion € nationally.

Other important transport statistics/topics. Overall micromobility use rose 8.3% in cities tracked by RideReport, and by Q1 2024 were up 8.6% over Q1 2023.

The year saw a couple of high-profile transportation disasters, from fires underneath the I-10 in Los Angeles to the I-95 collapse in Philadelphia. This was followed in 2024 by the collapse of the Key Bridge near Baltimore after it was struck by a cargo ship. However, the quick response of a temporary span on I-95 just a few weeks after the collapse provided a testament to our ability to build and recover.

Migration continued on a similar path as the COVID recovery in the U.S. as well, with Texas, Florida and the Southern states accounting for 87% of the country's growth last year.

Public transport recovered ridership in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, but all still sit below their pre-COVID levels of ridership. Just seven percent of urban areas in the U.S. tracked by the Federal Transit Administration reached 2019 levels of ridership.

Conclusion

Many trends are still being ironed out from the massive global disruption that COVID had on the transportation network. Traffic congestion continues to climb while new challenges emerge that also demand attention. The Scorecard reveals the contextual nature of transportation - its simply not a one size fits all approach. Some cities see trips to downtown stand pat while others see large increases. Many see traffic congestion building on arterials and neighborhood streets while others reveal stronger similarities to more traditional, "hub and spoke" travel demand.

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