It's Official, Philly Traffic is Horrible

Philadelphia is the 10th most congested city in the U.S.

The National Traffic Scorecard has come out for 2009 and the Philadelphia area is in the top ten for the most congested metro areas in the country. Coming in at lucky number 10, our area has moved up on the list since last year’s scorecard.

We’re still trying to figure out if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

The company that conducts this yearly survey, INRIX takes into account information gathered from places like the US Census Bureau, historical traffic data that has been gathered by them and information collected from GPS enabled cars.

Their data pinpointed the worst day and time to travel in our city, between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Fridays.

Well duh. This comes as no surprise to those of you that are stuck in traffic around the city trying to get home after a long workweek.

INRIX also ranks the worse bottlenecks around the country. The winner in our area is the Schuylkill Expressway eastbound at the South Street/Exit 346. The average speed when this area is congested is a whopping 18.9 m.p.h.

We didn’t make the cut for the national bottleneck list -- the ranking for our cities number one bottleneck was I-185 on the national chart.

Also, for those of you that think your specific route to and from work is the worst -- you could be right.

The worst place and time to travel in our area is on I-95 between Rt. 90/Betsy Ross Bridge and Aramingo Avenue on Thursdays between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., according to IRINX.

The top five cities on the list were Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Dallas-Fort Worth.

This isn't the first time our city has made it on a list for traffic congestion. We ranked number 11 in a list of most congested traffic cites in a recent Forbes.com article.

Being ranked number 10 is pretty bad, but look on the bright side Philly, at least we don't spend an average of almost 174 hours a year in 60 minute traffic each week like Los Angelinos do.

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