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Houston stuck at No. 7 on new list of U.S. cities with the worst traffic
Houston is heading in the wrong direction when it comes to terrible traffic.
In ConsumerAffairs’ 2025 ranking of U.S. metro areas with the worst traffic, the Houston area is parked at No. 7, up from No. 11 last year. ConsumerAffairs analyzed three sets of data — average commute time, daily hours of traffic congestion and rate of fatal car crashes — to rank the 50 largest metros based on population.
Here’s how Houston fared in this year’s ranking:
- Average commute time of 29.8 minutes, unchanged from last year.
- Five hours and 48 minutes of weekday traffic congestion, up 27 percent from last year.
- 10.7 fatal car crashes per 100,000 people, down 23.3 percent from last year.
“For motorists, prolonged time on the road increases the risk of accidents, particularly for motorcyclists who navigate between lanes in slow-moving traffic — [an illegal] practice known as lane splitting,” according to Houston-based personal injury law firm Ben Bronston & Associates.
Being stuck in so much traffic might prompt people to drive too fast to make up time, which is a bad idea considering Texas ranks as the fourth most expensive state in America for speeding tickets. The Houston area is also home to five roads ranked among the most deadly in America.
Making matters worse for Houston drivers, the nonprofit Congress for the New Urbanism placed the I-45 expansion in Houston on its 2025 list of “freeways without futures.” I-45 was cited as one of nine U.S. freeways where the infrastructure is “nearing the end of its functional life.”
Houston is no stranger to rankings of places with bad traffic.
The Global Traffic Scorecard released last year by Inrix found the average Houston drive lost 62 hours to traffic delays in 2023, putting it in eighth place among cities with the worst traffic. On the scorecard, Dallas ranked 17th, Austin ranked 21st, and San Antonio ranked 25th.
Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio appeared in the same order on this year’s ConsumerAffairs list:
- Dallas-Fort Worth ranked 14th, up one spot from last year. In DFW, weekday congestion time rose 27.6 percent to four hours and 47 minutes. Meanwhile, average commute time barely budged compared with last year (0.4 percent), and the rate of fatal car crashes plummeted 37.5 percent.
- Austin ranked 15th, up two spots from last year. Austin saw weekday congestion time climb 22.4 percent to four hours and 50 minutes, while average commute time inched up by 2.9 percent and the rate of fatal car crashes dipped 4.5 percent.
- San Antonio ranked 24th, up three spots from last year. Weekday congestion time in San Antonio jumped 13.5 percent to three hours and 38 minutes. Meanwhile, average commute time went up less than one percent and the rate of fatal car crashes fell 13.7 percent.
“Congestion is oftentimes a sign of economic prosperity,” Michael Manville, an urban planning professor at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, told ConsumerAffairs. “Because we don’t do anything to regulate access, the roads in an area with a booming economy become overloaded and congested.”
Here are the top cities with the worst traffic, according to the study:
- Washington, D.C.
- Los Angeles, CA
- Miami, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Atlanta, GA
- New York, NY
- Houston, TX
- Seattle, WA
- Baltimore, MD
- San Jose, CA
