QOTD: Where Have You Encountered the Worst Traffic?

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

Matt wrote earlier about 15-minute cities by featuring plans being made in Cleveland. The purpose of these cities is basically to set up neighborhoods so that anything residents want or need is within a 15-minute walk -- thus reducing automobile traffic.


As much as I love driving, this is part of why I pay way too much to live in the city of Chicago proper as opposed to the suburbs, even though I grew up in the 'burbs. It's so I don't have to drive everywhere I go -- I can walk, bike, use public transit, or hire a cab/rideshare.

On the other hand, I do drive a fair bit. Some of this is so I can test cars -- can't do much testing when the vehicle is parked in the garage -- and sometimes I drive because I need/want to go places that are only easily accessible by driving. And sometimes, I just find it faster/easier than using public transit.

The flip side of this is that I often deal with Chicago's horrendous traffic. It was even worse when I was younger and commuted to and from the suburbs on a daily basis for school and/or work.

As bad as Chicago traffic is, I've dealt with LA's notoriously terrible traffic jams. New York's, too -- I will never forget the time I was in the Bronx and watched as someone tried to change lanes. Other drivers wouldn't let them in, and two lanes of traffic got clogged.

Boston is bad, too. Nashville has been problematic when I've been there. And I spent significant time in Baltimore from 2015-2018 -- driving in Maryland is an experience that I'd not wish on my enemies.

To be clear, this isn't about places with the worst drivers -- though as my examples show, bad driving can and does cause traffic problems -- but the places you've driven with the worst traffic.

Chicago is, sadly, always high on those lists of "cities with bad traffic problems" you see floating around in the media a few times a year. Traffic and winter are the two things I hate most about this city, and I cringe thinking about much time I've lost sitting in traffic. It's depressing.

So, what city or town or whatever has the worst traffic you've encountered?

Sound off below.

[Image: Nikola Fific/Shutterstock.com]

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Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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  • Lou_BC Lou_BC on Mar 21, 2024

    A few tears back I was coming out of the backcountry late winter. Sun was setting. By the time I had hit the rural highway I saw something like 24 moose. There were several big bulls with their harems.

  • EAM3 EAM3 on Mar 21, 2024

    Miami. You used to be able to drive from anywhere in Broward county into Miami in under an hour. Now it seems to take an hour just to go a few miles.

  • Tassos Under incompetent, affirmative action hire Mary Barra, GM has been shooting itself in the foot on a daily basis.Whether the Malibu cancellation has been one of these shootings is NOT obvious at all.GM should be run as a PROFITABLE BUSINESS and NOT as an outfit that satisfies everybody and his mother in law's pet preferences.IF the Malibu was UNPROFITABLE, it SHOULD be canceled.More generally, if its SEGMENT is Unprofitable, and HALF the makers cancel their midsize sedans, not only will it lead to the SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST ones, but the survivors will obviously be more profitable if the LOSERS were kept being produced and the SMALL PIE of midsize sedans would yield slim pickings for every participant.SO NO, I APPROVE of the demise of the unprofitable Malibu, and hope Nissan does the same to the Altima, Hyundai with the SOnata, Mazda with the Mazda 6, and as many others as it takes to make the REMAINING players, like the Excellent, sporty Accord and the Bulletproof Reliable, cheap to maintain CAMRY, more profitable and affordable.
  • GregLocock Car companies can only really sell cars that people who are new car buyers will pay a profitable price for. As it turns out fewer and fewer new car buyers want sedans. Large sedans can be nice to drive, certainly, but the number of new car buyers (the only ones that matter in this discussion) are prepared to sacrifice steering and handling for more obvious things like passenger and cargo space, or even some attempt at off roading. We know US new car buyers don't really care about handling because they fell for FWD in large cars.
  • Slavuta Why is everybody sweating? Like sedans? - go buy one. Better - 2. Let CRV/RAV rust on the dealer lot. I have 3 sedans on the driveway. My neighbor - 2. Neighbors on each of our other side - 8 SUVs.
  • Theflyersfan With sedans, especially, I wonder how many of those sales are to rental fleets. With the exception of the Civic and Accord, there are still rows of sedans mixed in with the RAV4s at every airport rental lot. I doubt the breakdown in sales is publicly published, so who knows... GM isn't out of the sedan business - Cadillac exists and I can't believe I'm typing this but they are actually decent - and I think they are making a huge mistake, especially if there's an extended oil price hike (cough...Iran...cough) and people want smaller and hybrids. But if one is only tied to the quarterly shareholder reports and not trends and the big picture, bad decisions like this get made.
  • Wjtinfwb Not proud of what Stellantis is rolling out?
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