For those who drive in the city — enduring potholes, construction, detours, honking, orange cones and Rue Barré after Rue Barré — it shouldn’t come as a shock that Montreal has ranked among the most congested cities in the world.
(We would congratulate you on the fact that your complaints are now officially justified, but it’s not exactly a win.)
However, while we did crack the top 50, here’s the part that actually may surprise you: Montreal traffic is not even close to the worst in North America. Heck, we didn’t even take the top spot in Canada.
According to the latest INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, released June 25, Montreal is the 30th most congested city in the world. That adds up to 57 hours that local drivers waste in traffic — up 20% from 2022.
But Toronto takes the cake for worst traffic in Canada at 17th most congested. Our rivals to the west lose 63 hours to traffic each year.
Other North American cities that ranked high up on the list include New York City at number one and Mexico City at number two, followed by Chicago (#5), Los Angeles (#7), Boston (#8), Miami (#11) and Philadelphia (#13).
So, how is it that the Decarie Expressway can feel like a portal to hell if Montreal traffic isn’t really so bad? Well, our road woes did still beat out those in hundreds of cities, such as Auckland, New Zealand (#31), Ankara, Turkey (#32) and Berlin, Germany (#33).
Nationwide, we came out on top (or below, depending on how you look at it) of Vancouver (#56), Winnipeg (#289), Calgary (#328) and Edmonton (#639).
The report, which analyzed 900+ cities in 37 countries across all seven continents, asses three years of mobility data, providing “travel delay comparisons, costs of congestion to drivers and regions, and commuting trends based on the unique travel patterns within each metro area,” the INRIX website says, while accounting for post-COVID travel patterns to determine how commuting differs around the globe.
Here’s INRIX’s list of the top 10 worst traffic cities worldwide in 2023:
- New York City, New York, United States of America
- Mexico City, Mexico
- London, England
- Paris, France
- Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
- Istanbul, Turkey
- Los Angeles, California, United States of America
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Jakarta, Indonesia
You can view the full report on the INRIX website.
