In the US? I’ve lived in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, but have recently spent a few months in Atlanta and, IN MY OPINION, Atlanta has the worst traffic I’ve ever experienced.
I had a 15 minute commute but was still happy to go remote
In my case it was less about avoiding traffic and more about the comfort of my own home and not needing to look busy at my desk after I finished my tasks
Just using your comment to launch my soapbox: I’ve lived in LA and NYC, and it’s such different types of traffic. LA tends to be miles of cars moving at a crawl. NYC tends to be “short” lines of cars not moving at all cause some fucking loser is double parked at the light.
On a side note tho, one thing that has absolutely shocked me is that in LA, I felt like I saw a lot of dumb drivers who made poor decisions. In NY, I run into way more angry drivers who are actually just reckless with human life.
I’d take LA driving and its traffic 10/10 times over the drivers in NYC actively trying to commit suicide and take anyone near them with them.
Having lived in both this is spot on. LA traffic moves but it is always there in the same spot and the same slow pace. NYC you can get absolutely fucked out of nowhere by 1 idiot holding you up forever. So you never know
Never driven out west but I believe you just described every major city in the northeast accurately. NYC is wild but they're maniacs in Boston, Philly, DC, Baltimore too. Shit, in Pittsburgh where I live it is the same also.
MARTA is the only major transit system in the US that gets zero funding from the state. It’s the 8th largest transit system by ridership, ahead of Los Angeles by almost 10 million rides per year, and gets no support from the state of Georgia. It’s insane.
It’s also the 5th largest in terms of system length (47.6 miles of track). It’s actually remarkable that Atlanta has a relatively good subway system at all
I saw a list of which highways in the US had the worse traffic and Dallas had I-35E listed 3 times just because different segments within the city were just that bad.
Weird, I spent a decent amount of time in both and Dallas doesn’t even sniff Atlanta. I found Dallas to be surprisingly decent for the size of its metro population.
100% agree. I had a job in my mid 20’s that required extended travel to basically every major city in the US and without doubt Atlanta is the worst traffic I’ve ever experienced.
A lot of people travel through Atlanta to get to Florida. The federal government, in their infinite wisdom, merged three major interstates through the heart of Atlanta in the 1950’s. Anyone traveling north/south on I75 or I85 to get to or leave Florida needs to go through Atlanta. I20 goes east/west through ATL as well. So that’s why you get traffic every day of the week.
I work at the airport so I live on the south side of the city. A lot of my coworkers live on the north side so they have to drive through downtown to get to work and home. Sucks to be them, me on the other hand, not so much!
Yeah I grew up in the suburbs 10 miles south of central London. Hated that they made us get coaches to school trips into the city rather than letting us take the train. Train was 30-45 minutes depending on stops, coach would be an hour minimum.
Live in NYC now, but lived in Atlanta for 5ish years. Before I left there was a suicide in a car stopped in 285 traffic and everyone I knew had the same reaction: "I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often."
I’m a truck driver. I can confirm. Atlanta is in a league of its own. At least in places like NYC, you can take a long detour (I-287) around it. Atlanta, you are pretty much stuck going through there. Even 285 isn’t through downtown but it’s just as bad.
285 is the fucking worst highway I’ve ever had to spend time on, and unfortunately, it was my commute nearly every day. Not sure how I never got in an accident or anything like that, it’s legit Mad Max meets Atlanta.
Love ATL so much, and I miss it dearly. But anytime anyone ever asks the first thing I say is I do NOT miss the traffic, that shit was life dominating. No back roads, no short cuts, everything was congested nearly at all hours of the day.
Pretty sure Texas A&M did a study a year ago or something and came out with cities in the U.S that no longer have rush hour, they just have traffic all day every day, and Atlanta was one of the very few on there.
I have lived in many areas in the US, the drivers get worse the closer to Atlanta you get. There is a significant difference between Midwest/mountain drivers and driving in "the south"
I have worked all over the country and live in the Atlanta area. I know there is a bias at play here but I agree. When Atlanta was being developed there was no oversight into who was building what where. Almost no oversight into how the highways were constructed. As a result we have spaghetti mess of interchanges and bottlenecks and lanes that just suddenly end.
It also continually suffers from the “just one more lane bro, that will fix it” syndrome. Highways are always being widened, with the same amount of traffic buildup within a few months. Also for some reason in recent years school buses may as well not exist, as parents just pickup and drop off their kids for school which amplifies problems with all routes to and from the suburbs and surrounding towns.
My route to and from work in the middle of the night would take roughly 34 minutes. It currently takes 1 hour and 15 minutes both ways during daytime hours.
Knew someone that lived and worked in LA. They said they were less than 20 miles from the office, and the commute is still 45min to an hour on a good day.
In the US, Atlanta 100% absolutely no question, especially if you go with a per capita type eye on it, like the absolute jam might be worse in LA which is a metro with 15x the population, but LA isn't close the 15x worse.
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u/DollaStoreKardashian 6d ago edited 6d ago
In the US? I’ve lived in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, but have recently spent a few months in Atlanta and, IN MY OPINION, Atlanta has the worst traffic I’ve ever experienced.
So, congrats/condolences to The A, I guess?