Seattle traffic worsens: Drivers lose 63 hours to congestion in 2024

Traffic got worse throughout Seattle as people went back to the office last year, according to data from transportation analytics company Inrix.

Congestion jumped 9% in the Seattle area in 2024 compared to 2023. In turn, drivers lost 63 hours on average to traffic delays, five more hours than the year before, according to the 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard.

According to Inrix, Seattle has the 10th-worst traffic congestion in the nation — the same ranking the city had in 2023. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Houston, Atlanta and Washington D.C. were the nine cities ranking higher than Seattle regarding traffic congestion. Of the cities on the list, only three spent less time on the road compared to the year before — Los Angeles, Boston and Washington D.C.

A significant factor in the increased congestion on the roads is the return-to-office mandates for many local employees, especially Amazon workers.

Expect traffic: Amazon employees in Washington begin return to office full-time

Approximately 10% of Seattle’s jobs are located in the downtown area — comparable to only a few other metro areas like New York and San Francisco, per Inrix. Other cities included in the study, like Atlanta, has just 3% of its jobs in its downtown area.

Amazon, which employs approximately 50,000 workers at its Seattle headquarters, has spearheaded the movement to bring workers back into the office. In February 2023, Amazon asked all employees to come back to the office for three mandatory days beginning in May of that year. KIRO Newsradio traffic and transportation reporter Chris Sullivan immediately identified that the change impacted traffic getting into Seattle.

“The return of Amazon workers to Seattle for three days a week has blown our commutes out of the water,” Sullivan wrote in May 2023.

Going further, Sullivan got numbers from Inrix, a firm that studies traffic, and reported the average speed on westbound State Route 520 (SR 520) dropped by 28% during weekdays since the Amazon return. The average speed on Interstate 90 (I-90) west fell by 38%.

More on Amazon’s in-office mandate: Amazon executive defends controversial office policy

For downtown speeds, cars average 18 mph, the third-highest speed among the 10 most congested cities, trailing just Los Angeles and Miami. Other cities, like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., all have average speeds of under 15 mph in its downtown areas.

Washington State Department of Transportation’s (WSDOT) three-year project to improve Interstate 5 (I-5), Revive I-5, is also expected to start this spring, causing shutdowns of major stretches of the highway in order for crews to work on the thoroughfare. Revive I-5 is estimated to cost $203 million.

“Travelers who use I-5 should anticipate significant traffic back-ups when the double-lane work zone begins in spring 2025,” WSDOT warned via GeekWire.

Frank Sumrall is a content editor at MyNorthwest and producer of the Seattle Seahawks podcast, The Reset with Gee Scott. You can read his stories here and you can email him here.

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