Los Angeles has emerged as the most gridlock city in the developed world with drivers spending on average 104 peak hours in congestion in 2016.

According to analysis by transportation analytics firm Inrix of more than 1,000 cities across 38 countries worldwide, that surpassed second-place Moscow (91 hours) while New York was ranked third at 89 hours ahead of San Francisco (83 hours).

Inrix claims its 2016 Traffic Scorecard is the largest ever study of congestion and also adopts a new methodology that provides insights into the “scale and impact of congestion” at different times of the day and therefore on different users. For example, congestion during peak hours primarily affects commuters, while congestion during the day tends to have more impact on businesses.

Thailand leads the country congestion rankings with drivers spending an average of 61 hours in peak hours congestion. Also in the top five are Colombia (47 hours), Indonesia (47 hours) and Russia (42 hours). The UK comes in 11th (32 hours) and Germany 12th (30 hours).

In Europe, Moscow tops the major city ranking with 91 hours in congestion in 2016, followed by London (73 hours), Paris (65 hours) and Istanbul (59 hours).

The report found that across the 1,064 cities studied, drivers spent an average of nine per cent of their travel time “staring at the bumper in front of them” as average traffic speed in congestion was just 8.9 mph (14.4 kph).

Dublin was found to be the slowest major city studied at 4.7 mph (7.5 kph) during all congested periods, with peak hour speeds at 3.4 mph (5.5 kph). Meanwhile during the day, Oaxaca, Mexico was the slowest city with average congested speeds of 3.6 mph (5.9 kph).

The report also calculated the economic cost of congestion. It found that congestion across the UK, Germany and US cost almost $450 billion in 2016 or $971 per capita. The average cost per driver was $1,400 (US), £968 (UK), and €1,531 (Germany), and while the cost of congestion per driver was similar in the UK and US after adjusting for price levels the cost per driver in Germany was 38 percent higher.

For this year’s scorecard, Inrix analysed 500 terabytes of data from 300 million different sources covering more than five million miles of road.

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