Beth Nakamura/Staff

Portland has the 10th worst rush hour traffic in the country, according to a new report, and commuters who drive to work lost nearly a full work week of their lives in traffic last year.

Inrix, a Kirkland, Washington-based data firm released its Global Traffic Scorecard this week. The company said it based its rankings on some 300 million different data points – such as news reports, road and weather conditions and social media updates – collected from 5 million miles of road, to formulate the rankings.

“Congestion is an indiscriminate global phenomenon that is dramatically impacted by population, the economy, infrastructure, and the proliferation of rideshare and delivery services,” the report said. “It also imposes massive costs both economically and socially.”

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Inrix said “solving traffic” means a city must tailor its own mobility improvements to help people get around.

According to the rankings, Boston has the nation’s worst congestion, followed by Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, Seattle, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Portland.

The report deemed Moscow as having the world’s worst traffic. Portland falls 73rd on the global rankings.

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Big data-driven reports like Inrix’s are often criticized for setting unrealistic conditions for free-flowing traffic speeds, and for not factoring in the density of smaller metro areas.

Joe Cortright, a Portland-based economist, said the report ignored differences in commute times, pointing out cities with significant sprawl like Atlanta and Houston have farther commutes but aren’t considered in the report.

Portlanders lost 116 hours in congestion, the report said, costing the city $1.4 billion in economic impact. That equates to $1,625 per driver in Portland, the report said.

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

The company said it calculated the hours lost based on the difference between traveling in peak and off-peak times versus “free flow” conditions. Under this metric, consistently congested cities like Los Angeles get a reprieve because their “peak severity” is less than Boston or other top-ranked cities.

According to the company’s rankings, Portlanders saw their commutes improve slightly from last year, and the city jumped from the 8th worst to 10th worst as commutes improved by 9 percent year over year.

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Cortright said if that's true that's "great news" that should be celebrated and understood.

Those improvements happened without adding auxiliary or travel lanes on congested freeways like Intestate 5 and 205 in the metro area or through congestion pricing, two controversial ideas by state transportation currently underway.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Cortright said the report’s economic impact data points are “fiction.”

“There's no feasible set of investments that would let everyone drive as fast at rush hour as at 2 a.m., and the cost of building that much capacity would be far more than the supposed ‘cost’ of congestion,” he said in an email.

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura/Staff

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.