These Are the 10 Worst Traffic Bottlenecks in the US

Face it, with the holidays approaching we're all going to be stuck in traffic for at least a little bit. But we won't have it nearly as bad as the poor saps trying to get through the following 10 bottlenecks, which were deemed the worst in the country by the American Highways Users Alliance in a report released Monday. "This report furthers the unassailable truth that America is stuck in traffic," the US transportation secretary says in a press release. Unsurprisingly, six of the 10 worst bottlenecks—and 12 of the top 50—are in Los Angeles.

1. Chicago: A massive 12-mile bottleneck on the Kennedy Expressway between the Circle Interchange and Edens junction had drivers sitting in traffic for 16.9 million hours in 2014. Fixing just this one bottleneck would reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by 133 million pounds.
2. Los Angeles: The Seal Beach bottleneck along four miles of the San Diego Freeway between I-605 and the Garden Grove Freeway caused 7.1 million hours of delays in 2014.
3. Los Angeles: "Many lane merges and divergences" cause major traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway through downtown Los Angeles.
4. Los Angeles: A bottleneck occurs on I-405 between Venice and Wilshire boulevards where a drop in lanes is made worse by proximity to tourist attractions and state beaches.
5. Los Angeles: The Hollywood Freeway between Franklin Avenue and Glendale Boulevard serves both commercial and residential areas.
6. Los Angeles: The Harbor Freeway has 12 entrances and exits in less than three miles between Exposition Boulevard and Stadium Way in downtown Los Angeles.
7. Los Angeles: Two lanes of the US 101 Freeway were permanently lost between Sepulveda and Laurel Canyon, leading in part to this bottleneck.
8. New York: Drivers spent 3.4 million hours stuck in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan in 2014.
9. New York: The Cross Manhattan and Cross Bronx expressways from Broadway past the George Washington Bridge are nearly as bad for drivers.
10. Austin: A three-mile stretch of I-35 between East Dean Keeton and East Riverside Drive in downtown Austin is heavily used by freight traffic while giving access to the Texas Capitol and University of Texas

Read the full list of America's 50 worst bottlenecks here. (More traffic stories.)