Study: Atlanta's traffic-jam rush hour lasts pretty much all day now

In a thorough national study recently published by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, it’s tough to decide which statistics are bleakest in the case of Atlanta, but let’s start here: 

Delays experienced by metro Atlanta commuters last year totaled more than 261 million wasted hours, the seventh worst in the nation. That sounds drastic, especially considering it marked an 8 percent increase over 2023, according to the institute. 

In short, the days of easy-breezy, pandemic-era travel by car across the metro are clearly behind us. And we’re quickly trending in the wrong direction.   

Texas A&M’s 2025 Urban Mobility Report indicates metro Atlanta ranks among the worst U.S. cities for congestion by several metrics, but that our problems could be more dismal (see: Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, generally speaking).  

Still, on average, Atlanta in 2024 experienced congestion for six hours each day, with Wednesdays between 4 and 6 p.m. being as bad as traffic gets. Even Saturdays are clogged up for hours, to an extent. 

So the phrase “rush hour” is more of a misnomer than ever in Atlanta. 

The top three worst cities for annual delays per commuter were Los Angeles (137 hours), San Francisco (134 hours), and New York, (99 hours), respectively. 

Atlanta finished ninth (87 hours) by that metric in 2024. (Consider: Back in 2020, our metro’s annual tally per auto commuter plunged to just 37 hours, per analysts.)

The study also found, in Atlanta, yearly congestion costs including wasted fuel and blown productivity per commuter topped $2,200 last year (that’s $7 billion total), according to the institute. 

A trip by car in Atlanta that should have taken 20 minutes in 2024 instead took 26 minutes with traffic (28 minutes in the peak direction), and it required ATL commuters to plan for 39 minutes to arrive at destinations in time. The silver lining? None of those stats landed in the Top 20 worst among 101 cities studied. 

Here's a quick overview of where metro Atlanta traffic stands today—and where it's trending: 

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Analysis: Atlanta is second-best U.S. city for Gen Z right now (Urbanize ATL)