Think Boise traffic is just the worst? Think again. Our commute time cracks a Top 10 list.

If you’re one of those people who can’t stop complaining about Boise’s traffic as the Treasure Valley experiences booming growth, the researchers at Haven Life, an online insurance agency, have a message for you:

Calm down. You don’t know what real traffic is.

Using data on one-way commute times from the Census Bureau’s 2017 American Community Survey, Haven Life calculated the average round-trip commute in cities across the United States, and guess what the research found?

Boise has the 10th-best round-trip commute in the U.S.: 36.8 minutes.

So yes, there’s more traffic on the roads. And yes, as Haven Life pointed out in its report, there is “allegedly spotty bus service.” But this ain’t California. And it’s not a major metro area where roads are so clogged that it takes 70-plus minutes for the average commuter each day.

Simply put, “Boise residents enjoy one of the shortest round-trip commutes in the nation,” Haven Life said.

Also in the top 10 for commuting were cities such as Lincoln, Nebraska (No. 7, 36.6 minutes); Wichita, Kansas (No. 6, 36.4 minutes); Eugene, Oregon (No. 5, 36.4 minutes); Sioux Falls, South Dakota (No. 2, 33.8 minutes); and Lubbock, Texas (No. 1, 32.8 minutes).

All of those cities have one major thing in common with Boise: a big university in town.

Most people could probably guess where the nation’s worst commutes are: California. Palmdale (No. 1, 85.4 minutes); Corona (No. 4, 73.4 minutes); Santa Clarita (No. 6, 69.8 minutes); and Moreno Valley (No. 8, 68.6 minutes) all reside in the bottom 10. All of those are in the greater Los Angeles area, which arguably has the worst traffic in the world.

New York City is the second-worst commute, at 81.6 minutes; Jersey City, New Jersey is third-worst, at 73.6 minutes; and Newark, New Jersey fifth-worst, at 71 minutes, reflecting a theme in that part of the country, too.

Americans’ daily commutes have been increasing for nearly three decades, according to Haven Life. As of 2017, 8.9 percent of workers traveled an hour or more each way on their commute, up from 8 percent in 2009, according to the Census data. This coincides with a decrease in the number of Americans with very short commutes (less than 20 minutes round trip), which slid from 14.3 percent of workers in 2009 to 12.7 percent in 2017, according to that same data.

This story was originally published January 15, 2019 at 5:52 PM.