While overall commuter traffic in North America was 14 percent lower in 2021 compared with 2019, congestion levels in Philadelphia are almost back to pre-pandemic levels. Joann Muller wended her way through the data for Axios.

To determine how much time drivers spend in traffic, TomTom, a location tech provider, gathers hundreds of millions of anonymized GPS signals from cars and smartphones throughout the world. It uses the input to analyze traffic across more than 400 cities.

In Philadelphia, congestion is down less than two percent compared with 2019, with an average of 50 hours spent in traffic per year. That positions the City of Brotherly Love with the fifth most congested roadways nationwide, behind only New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

According to TomTom data specialist Jeroen Brouwer, congestion levels often depend on the particular city’s COVID-19 restrictions and the nature of its workforce. While a significant number of local office employees stopped commuting, other workers still use their vehicles to make it to their shifts at hospitals, factories, and other workplaces.

Worse, there is little hope for relief, as congestion has been building throughout the country month by month.

“Rush hour is coming back slowly,” said Brouwer. “The question is: What will the new normal look like?”

Read more about traffic congestion levels in Axios.