Texas drivers: Which city has the worst traffic?

(NEXSTAR) — It’s something Texans love to argue about: whether the traffic in their city is worse than the traffic in yours.

It’s a topic that has sparked dozens of threads and countless posts in the Texas subreddit, where users have often voted and voiced their own opinions. One particularly interesting discussion, titled “Worst traffic in the state,” ruled by 1.4K votes that Houston has Texas’ worst traffic — but still, some others in the replies disagreed.

“I’ve spent more time in Houston traffic but that was just sort of a way of life,” wrote one Texan. “Personally I find Austin traffic to be the most annoying, unpredictable, and frustrating.”

Ultimately, many Redditors argued the answer to the question depends on what you mean by “bad” traffic. Below, we combed through three sets of data to determine which Texas city does indeed have the worst traffic according to three factors: deadly crashes, wait times/delays and busiest roadways.

Most dangerous/deadly traffic in Texas

Going by Texas Department of Transportation data for 2023, Houston is the most dangerous driving city in Texas.

When it comes to fatal crashes, Houston far outpaces other Texas cities (even the large ones). In 2023 alone, there were 274 fatal crashes and 290 fatalities on Houston roads. That’s in addition to crashes TxDOT refers to as “suspected serious crashes,” of which the city of Houston had 1,360 in 2023. There were an estimated 1,612 suspected serious injuries as a result of these crashes, according to the report.

Here’s how other Texas cities compare.

While Houston leads across all categories of crashes and traffic-related injuries, Dallas isn’t terribly far behind — despite being slightly less populous than San Antonio. Dallas, which is Texas’ third-most populated city, saw 36 more fatal crashes and 41 more traffic-related fatalities in 2023.

After the cities listed above, there is a steep decline in the number of crashes — fatal or otherwise — across other Texas cities. The cities with the lowest double-digit number of fatal crashes (10) are Lewisville, Mesquite, Odessa, Port Arthur and Wichita Falls.

All-in-all, there were 2,057 fatal crashes in Texas last year.

Longest wait times on Texas roads

If you’re judging traffic by minutes spent on the road, well, Houston wins again.

In June, transportation analytics company Inrix published its 2023 Global Traffic Scorecard, which analyzed data for 947 urban areas globally to rank which cities cause drivers the most delays.

Luckily, no Texas cities make the global top 20. However, four Lone Star State cities do appear on its U.S.-only ranking.

While Houston’s 62 hour-delay is far below New York City’s 101 hours (for which it earned the top spot nationally), the Space City had higher delay times than some other large cities, like Atlanta, San Francisco and Baltimore.

Busiest roads in Texas

While Texas doesn’t have any highways in the top 10 of financial tech news outlet Coast‘s 20 Busiest Highways in the U.S. list, Houston’s Interstate 10 and I-69 both land on the full list, at 11th busiest and 15th busiest, respectively.

Using highway statistics data from the Federal Highway Administration, Coast also found that “Texas is home to half of the top 10 busiest highways in the south.” These cities include Conroe–The Woodlands (fifth), Houston (no. 7), Dallas–Fort Worth (no. 8), San Antonio (no. 9), and Denton–Lewisville (no. 10)

Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute‘s most recent annual analysis of Texas’ 100 most congested road sections also found which areas of Texas roads are most crowded — an annual study covering nearly 10,000 miles across the Lone Star State.

TAMU’s top five most congested roadways in Texas are:

All-in-all, TAMU found Texans experienced a total annual delay of 408,197,108 hours on Texas roads.

FINAL VERDICT: Houston.

While roads in Austin may be ill-equipped for volume and Dallas roads may be nearly as dangerous as Houston ones, Houston has every factor going for it to take the crown as Worst Texas Traffic City.

Stay safe on all Texas roads! And don’t forget to Drive Friendly — the Texas Way!