Seattle drivers face one of longest commutes in nation

Heading west during rush hour on Washington State Route 520 on Friday, May 5, 2017. Heading west during rush hour on Washington State Route 520 on Friday, May 5, 2017. Photo: GRANT HINDSLEY, SEATTLEPI.COM Photo: GRANT HINDSLEY, SEATTLEPI.COM Image 1 of / 38 Caption Close Seattle drivers face one of longest commutes in nation 1 / 38 Back to Gallery

Seattle drivers are aware that traffic in the Emerald City has gone from bad to worse.

But a new report from staffing firm Robert Half quantified just how bad that commute has become.

In its ranking of 27 U.S. cities, Seattle's average roundtrip commute came in sixth place at 54.22 minutes.

The report also ranked cities on how stressful the commutes were, a list that included Seattle, but at a perhaps happier location — 17. Los Angeles topped the list for most stressful commutes.

Seattle's traffic problems are not new, but haven't been helped by the 100,000-plus people who have moved to the city in the last seven years and that's not even counting the numbers who have moved to King County (more than 76,000 or more last year alone).

RELATED: 2016 marked record-breaking migration to Seattle area

And while the economic growth has been a boon to some, it has driven housing costs to astronomical new heights. The median home price for the Seattle metro area is up to $455,800, according to recent figures from Zillow. That's a 12.4 percent hike from just a year ago; prices have risen twice as fast as in San Francisco.

RELATED: Report: Seattle home values rising twice as fast as SF

Those crazy-high home prices (and rents, for that matter) have forced many who work in the city to live in the outer edges, sometimes not even in the same county. Those growth patterns only serve to put more strain on the highways for those who can't or don't opt for public transit (strained itself).

And so it goes that traffic in Seattle is an undertaking best avoided if at all possible.

We gathered the top 25 longest commutes in the slideshow above. Click through to see how Seattle compares to other cities around the U.S.