You’ll never believe how much time Toronto drivers lose to rush hour traffic in a year, Canada Reviews

If your daily commute feels like an endurance sport, findings from a new global traffic report will back you up. A new annual traffic index shows that Toronto ranked as Canada’s second-most congested city in 2025, right behind Vancouver.

The report, an annual Traffic Index by TomTom’s, has some good news: Toronto’s average congestion level dipped slightly compared to 2024. The average congestion level in 2025 was 47.7 per cent, down 1.8 per cent from last year.

Still, the day-to-day reality for drivers adds up to a lot of time spent crawling along the road. TomTom estimates that Torontonians lost 100 hours per year to rush hour traffic in 2025 (the equivalent of four days and four hours), which is about three hours and 50 minutes more than in 2024. For context, this is the extra time spent driving a 10-kilometre trip twice a day during peak hours across 230 working days.

The numbers get even more painful: the average travel time for a 10-kilometre drive was 26 minutes 40 seconds (up one minute and eight seconds from 2024). For morning rush hour, a 10-kilometre trip took about 29 minutes and eight seconds, with an average speed of 20.6 km/h, and for evening rush hour, the same 10-kilometre trip took 34 minutes and five seconds, with an average speed of 17.6 km/h.

For lovebirds looking to drive to their fave restaurant on Valentine’s Day, that was the single worst day to drive last year! According to TomTom, Feb. 14, 2025, had an average congestion level of 76 per cent, with a peak congestion level of 106 per cent at 6 p.m. (at that 6 p.m. peak, TomTom estimates that drivers covered just 3.8 kilometres in 15 minutes).

For those who take the highway, things weren’t moving faster in 2025. TomTom says Toronto’s average speed on highways was 53.6 km/h, so about 4.2 km/h slower than in 2024.

As harsh as these stats are, Vancouver fared much worse: average congestion hit 56.5 per cent in 2025 (up 0.8 per cent from 2024) versus Toronto’s 47.7 per cent (down 1.8 points), and drivers in Vancouver lost 112 hours a year to rush-hour traffic compared with 100 hours in Toronto.

Globally, TomTom highlights that the most congested cities in the world (by congestion level) include Mexico City (number 1), Bengaluru (number 2) and Dublin (number 3).

You can see the full Toronto report here.