Las Vegas traffic congestion ranked 22nd worst in the nation

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) - If you think your commute to work is taking longer, it is not your imagination. A new study ranks Las Vegas as the 22nd most congested city in the US. The study found in the Las Vegas Metro, the average driver spent 41 hours last year sitting in traffic in 2022.

“We collected data from billions of data sources globally,” explained Inrix Transportation Analyst Bob Pishue.

Out of 1,000 major cities studied around the world, Las Vegas came in 127th for the worst traffic congestion on the Inrix 2022 scorecard. Vegas also moved up the list of cities in the US.

“You have Vegas showing up again in the top 25 for the second year in a row,” Pishue recounted.

Pre-pandemic, the slowest speed during an average morning or afternoon commute in Las Vegas was 37 miles per hour, now it’s 9 miles per hour slower.

“Transportation departments come up with this number which is called the value of time... and using that value of time, we have found that the typical commuter in Las Vegas loses about $700,” Pishue revealed.

While that’s not as much as drivers in LA or New York or Chicago where on average commuters spend 155 hours a year stuck in traffic, average drive times in Vegas are still up with more people moving to the area and less people working from home.

“Obviously with Covid-19 we saw a sharp reduction, a really unprecedented reduction in the amount people who were traveling... Essential businesses were open but non-essential ones weren’t,” Pishue added. Pishue says there is good news. He doesn’t expect commute times to continue to climb.

“I would probably expect a place like Las Vegas to kind of level out. Officials there are paying close attention to what is going on on the road network,” Pishue predicted.

According to UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research, a million more people are expected to call the Las Vegas Valley home over the next forty years adding to the current population of 2.3 million people, but Pishue says projects to handle that growth is already underway and Vegas traffic could certainly be worse.

“People who drive there won’t agree with me here, but it is not astronomically high, so at least drivers can know that people have it worse elsewhere,” Pishue said.

The full study can be found here.

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