Los Angeles has experienced more than its share of struggles in the last few years.<\/p>\n
But when it come to one of the things that drives residents crazy, there are signs of slight improvement.<\/p>\n
New data show that the home of Carmageddon<\/a>, the SigAlert<\/a> and road rage has actually seen traffic congestion get a bit better. <\/p>\n Los Angeles was the 10th-most congested city in the world in 2025, according to the Global Traffic Scorecard<\/a> from INRIX, a transportation analytics firm. That\u2019s not exactly something to brag about, but L.A. was the eighth-most-congested in 2024. <\/p>\n Compared to other major U.S. cities, L.A.\u2019s congestion ranked fourth, behind Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia, the scorecard found.<\/p>\n Throughout the mid-to-late 2010s, L.A. routinely ranked<\/a> as having the worst traffic congestion anywhere in the world. <\/p>\n So what is going on? Experts cite several theories:<\/p>\n Reworked commuting habits spurred by the COVID pandemicThe continued struggles of downtown Los Angeles, where office vacancies remain highL.A.\u2019s already notorious congestion, which has long been so severe that it\u2019s easier for conditions to get slightly better than any worse<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say L.A. drivers had it easy, though. In 2025, the average Angeleno driver still spent 87 hours \u2014 more than three full days \u2014 sitting in traffic, down from 88 hours the year before, according to the report. <\/p>\n Not surprising<\/p>\n The flat or declining congestion numbers were not a surprise given the persistence of working from home in<\/a> the post-pandemic era, said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA. <\/p>\n Plus, he added, \u201cthings have always been pretty bad\u201d traffic-wise in L.A., meaning it\u2019s harder for things to get much worse as opposed to slightly better.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not new that we occasionally get knocked off the perch,\u201d Manville said.<\/p>\n He noted that a 1% year-over-year decrease in congestion \u2014 the change noted in the INRIX scorecard \u2014 isn\u2019t likely to be noticed by commuters.<\/p>\n \u201cThe typical person in Los Angeles knows that traffic is bad and causes a lot of downstream problems,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Downtown L.A. struggles<\/p>\n Downtown is the hub of L.A.\u2019s sprawling freeway network. But the area has not been the dominant business district for spread-out Southern California for decades, and the pandemic lead to more office vacancies.<\/p>\n A report released earlier this year found the vacancy <\/a>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\u2019s vacancy rate was just 13%, the report noted. <\/p>\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n