There are so many firsts to celebrate in Massachusetts. It’s the birthplace of Dunkin’ Donuts, the site of the country’s first public park, and the place where the first basketball game was played. Don’t even get us started on sports titles, there are literally too many to list in one article. It’s safe to say that we take being in the lead pretty seriously here in the Bay State.

Given our fondness for coming in first, it may have been surprising to see that we didn’t top the list of places with the most traffic on the 2022 Inrix Global Traffic Scorecard. We came close with a second-place finish among U.S. cities, and scored 4^th place for the worst traffic in the world.  London, Chicago, and Paris, all beat us out.

Boston’s 4^th place finish doesn’t seem to be from a lack of effort. Based on the data reported by Inrix, traffic in Boston is back in a big way – with an average of 134 hours of delay per driver. That’s more than double the national average of 51 hours. While the city has not completely returned to pre-pandemic levels of congestion according to the report, we are well on our way.

This may be one place where we don’t need to strive for a top place finish. All of this traffic congestion comes at a high cost -- $2,270 per driver to be specific, a total of $4.3 billion for the city. It also leads to air pollution. According to the U.S. EPA, the transportation sector contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector at 27%. We already know that exposure to air pollution can affect asthma, and new research suggests it can impair cognitive function.

It’s possible to move out of the top 5 most congested places in the world, but it would require a big effort. Programs that support increasing mobility options and encouraging fewer people to choose driving alone are just a couple of the things we could do. Bostonians do love a challenge. If we focus on moving down the list instead of up, we could be the place with the biggest reduction in congestion. That’s a title I think we could all get behind.