San Diegans lost over a day to rush hour in 2025
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
San Diego drivers lost 30 hours stuck in rush hour last year, per the TomTom Traffic Index.
Why it matters: That's more than an entire day staring at somebody else's license plate, tail lights and — if you're lucky — quippy bumper stickers.
By the numbers: San Diego falls in the middle of time lost in other big cities.
- New York drivers wasted away a staggering 125 hours on average last year.
- Drivers in San Francisco (116 hours), Honolulu (88) and Boston (86) also spent nearly as much soul-sucking time bumper-to-bumper in 2025.
- "For comparison, drivers in Lima, Peru, in the most congested city in the world, lost nearly 188 hours in traffic," the mapping and location tech company says.
Cities where drivers lost the least time were Tulsa, Wichita and Council Bluffs, Iowa, each at 10 hours.
Yes, but: San Diego's congestion is getting worse, according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute's 2025 Urban Mobility Report.
- It found that traffic has increased steadily since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zoom in: The regional planning agency San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG, has a long list of transit projects aimed at easing traffic.
- But it doesn't have the money to fund them.