America’s 10 Most Gridlocked Cities

Nothing in life is guaranteed except death, taxes and traffic. Traffic is arguably the worst driving companion but it’s often the one we spend time with the most. While none of us are immune to complaining about traffic, it’s now possible to claim your city has the worst traffic in America. Auto Insurance Center, an automotive news and insurance site, analyzed data to see which cities are the most gridlocked by using a peculiar measurement — complaints on Instagram.

The Method

For the “Insta-traffic” study, Auto Insurance Center studied 126,085 Instagram posts from 2011 to 2017 that included the hashtags #Traffic, #TrafficSucks, and #TrafficJam. They excluded posts from cities with fewer than 50,000 residents (based on data from the U.S. Census) as well as cities with fewer than 100 geotagged Instagram posts available to view.

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These top 10 cities are the American cities that met both the population and post count criteria and had the highest number of traffic-related Instagram posts. The study is measured in number of city posts per capita, meaning the number of Instagram posts geotagged with that city’s location that includes a complaint about traffic.

10. Los Angeles

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 200.9

9. Boston

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 202.2

8. Orlando, Florida

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 214.1

7. Marietta, Georgia

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 230.2

6. Seattle

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 243.1

5. New York City

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 249.1

4. San Francisco

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 484.4

3. Atlanta

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 583.8

2. Miami & Miami Beach, Florida

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 956.2

1. Santa Monica, California

Number of City Posts Per Capita: 993.3

Image: Kichigin