L.A. traffic is actually getting better. That’s not entirely a good thing. Here’s why
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Los Angeles has experienced more than its share of struggles in the last few years.
But when it comes to one of the things that drives residents crazy, there are signs of slight improvement.
New data show that the home of Carmageddon, the SigAlert and road rage has actually seen traffic congestion get a bit better.
Los Angeles was the 10th-most congested city in the world in 2025, according to the Global Traffic Scorecard from INRIX, a transportation analytics firm. That’s not exactly something to brag about, but L.A. was the eighth-most-congested in 2024.
Compared to other major U.S. cities, L.A.’s congestion ranked fourth, behind Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia, the scorecard found.
Throughout the mid-to-late 2010s, L.A. routinely ranked as having the worst traffic congestion anywhere in the world.
We ranked the 25 best and worst freeways in Southern California, based on traffic, accidents and much more. See the worst roads in Los Angeles.
So what is going on? Experts cite several theories:
- Reworked commuting habits spurred by the COVID pandemic
- The continued struggles of downtown Los Angeles, where office vacancies remain high
- L.A.’s already notorious congestion, which has long been so severe that it’s easier for conditions to get slightly better than any worse
That’s not to say L.A. drivers had it easy, though. In 2025, the average Angeleno driver still spent 87 hours — more than three full days — sitting in traffic, down from 88 hours the year before, according to the report.
Not surprising
The flat or declining congestion numbers were not a surprise given the persistence of working from home in the post-pandemic era, said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA.
Plus, he added, “things have always been pretty bad” traffic-wise in L.A., meaning it’s harder for things to get much worse as opposed to slightly better.
“It’s not new that we occasionally get knocked off the perch,” Manville said.
Traffic has long been a headache in Southern California — but there are ways to cut down on the congestion.
He noted that a 1% year-over-year decrease in congestion — the change noted in the INRIX scorecard — isn’t likely to be noticed by commuters.
“The typical person in Los Angeles knows that traffic is bad and causes a lot of downstream problems,” he said.
Downtown L.A. struggles
Downtown is the hub of L.A.’s sprawling freeway network. But the area has not been the dominant business district for spread-out Southern California for decades, and the pandemic led to more office vacancies.
A report released earlier this year found the vacancy rate for offices downtown was nearly 34%, with overall availability at 37%. That was an improvement from the year before but still a concern, experts said at the time. By contrast, Century City’s vacancy rate was just 13%, the report noted.
There has been growing support for converting some empty high-rise towers into apartments and condos, but that is an expensive and time-consuming process.
Indeed, the INRIX traffic scorecard found that downtown L.A. sees less car traffic than the downtown areas of other major cities. One factor that likely buoyed L.A.’s ranking in the report was speed. In downtown L.A., the average car speed was 17 mph, by far the fastest of the 10 most-congested cities worldwide, according to INRIX.
The combo of remote work and empty buildings downtown would mean fewer commuters causing gridlock, but also fewer clients for businesses in the area.
With downtown’s office rental market mired in high vacancies and falling values, stakeholders are clamoring for more city support to convert high-rises to housing that would help address the city’s persistent housing shortage.
Manville said other U.S. metropolitan areas have much denser downtowns and a greater contrast in density with surrounding suburbs. L.A., though, has relatively moderate density that sprawls somewhat consistently across hundreds of miles.
“It’s not really dense enough in any area to really support public transportation,” he said of the Southland, “but dense enough to make traffic bad.”
That traffic carries a cost — and not just in terms of time. Traffic delays cost the average L.A. driver $1,602 in 2025, the report found.
Aggregated over the whole city, the total figure was a staggering $8.6 billion. Only New York City, at $9.7 billion, saw a higher cost within the U.S. Delays were calculated by the difference between overnight average speed and average speed at peak rush hour in each city.
“The most interesting takeaway was the absence of growth (and even recession) in delays in some major metros,” the report concluded. “More investigation is needed as to the cause, including population shifts, commuting and car ownership habits, and other economic and demographic data.”
An initiative by Los Angeles officials to figure out how to test plans to remove police from traffic enforcement is running behind schedule — again.
If Los Angeles wants to continue to curb congestion, lowering speed limits might help, a study noted in the report suggests.
The report highlighted two examples in Santa Monica where lower speed limits decreased congestion significantly: Colorado Avenue between Ocean Avenue and 17th Street, and Michigan Avenue between Lincoln Boulevard and 19th Street.
Though it might seem contradictory, reducing speed limits in congested conditions can actually result in smoother traffic flow and less stop/start movement, according to the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety.
On Colorado Avenue, observed travel speeds stayed the same even as limits fell, while on Michigan Avenue speeds dropped considerably. The report speculated that congestion on Colorado Avenue caused speeds to fall below even the updated speed limit. On Michigan Avenue, excessive speeding fell from 6% of vehicles to 1%.
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