A new ranking on traffic congestion in cities around the globe confirms what you already knew: Seattle drivers waste a lot of time sitting in traffic — and congestion got even worse last year.
According to the latest TomTom Traffic Index, Seattle ranked seventh among U.S. cities for congestion in 2025. The average congestion level in 2025 was about 45%, meaning trips took nearly one-and-a-half times as long as they would under free-flow conditions. That was up roughly 2.5 percentage points from the year before, when Seattle ranked eighth for congestion.
TomTom is an Amsterdam-based software company that provides navigation and location-based products and services. Their annual index, now in its 15th year, draws on anonymized GPS data from more than 2 trillion miles of driving worldwide to compare congestion levels, speeds, and time lost to traffic across cities and countries…