“Miami-Time” is under attack as the famed excuse to use when arriving late to a party keeps getting later and later after a new report by INRIX places the South Florida city as one of the 10 worst cities to drive in the world.
Yes, the world.
The report states that Miami’s traffic increased 30% from 2021 to 2022, placing it as the number 8th most congested cities, alongside New York City, Palermo, Bogota and Monterrey, Mexico.
With a total 105 hours lost to traffic, that places the ‘305’ above the City of Los Angeles.
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If you're wondering what those lost hours mean, it's essentially the time you lose by traveling in the hours of traffic versus the hours when there is no traffic, according to Bob Pishue, a traffic analyst with INRIX.
Not only does it make the commute more irritating, but according to the Department of Transportation, sitting in traffic actually costs everyone money.
"In Miami, for example, the typical driver lost $1,700 due to traffic congestion just in lost time," Pishue said, "And then on top of that, you have things like lost fuel and and they're also just a lot of other missed business meetings. So those types of things really weigh on drivers and commuters in Miami," he added.
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Besides wasting our time, traffic also affects the wallets of small businesses and industries that rely heavily on transportation and logistics.
"There are other things too that impact you like freight delays and things like that when heavy trucks and delivery vehicles are delayed, that means that they can they get fewer appointments. So take a plumber, for example. If he's got to bounce around town, if there's a bunch of traffic, he gets to one or two fewer customers a day. So that does have an impact on a kind of a ripple effect on a number of different industries," Pishue said.
While working on the aging infrastructure is a long-term solution, Pishue recommends strategies that help "improve traffic signal timing, promoting more transit use, promoting telecommuting" which have shown positive results in other cities.
He also looked towards technology, like self-driving cars as a possible solution to help ease the load by offering a way for commuters to ride-share.
In terms of the the intersections with the biggest congestions, I-95 is a major problem only because of the amount of people that use but it's not as high on the list as 826 Palmetto, or the 836 Dolphin Expressway or US-1 (or as I like to call it "The US-less One") which, as you may know, are serious bottlenecks.
On the bright side, at least we don’t compare to London who scored 156 hours lost to traffic and earned the title for most congested city in the world.
Hopefully, for 2023, the numbers improve and allows us to keep using that famed excuse to arrive late to our events.
Here are the top 10 most congested cities in the world:
