#2, Lunalilo Freeway (H-1), Honolulu 
 
 Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 347 
 
 Worst bottleneck: Eastbound, S Vineyard Blvd/Ward Ave 
 
 Length of worst bottleneck: .82 mi 
 
 Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 36 
 
 Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 16.4 mph 
 
 The expert opinion: “There are only three lanes in either direction on Lunalilo Freeway through town, making it slow wherever there is a merge,” says KSSK traffic reporter Jason Yotsuda in an email. “Not much can be done there.” 
 
 #3, Capital Beltway, surrounds Washington DC 
 
 Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 194 
 
 Worst bottleneck: Southbound, Exit 2A-B 
 
 Length of worst bottleneck: 1.26 mi 
 
 Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 31 
 
 Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 21.2 mph 
 
 The expert opinion: “It’s a rough road,” says Adam Tuss, transportation reporter for WTOP 103.5. “It has lots of twists and turns, people speed on it and it’s got a lot of slow points too. It’s certainly not a freeway without its challenges.” 
 
 #4, I-35, Austin 
 
 Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 460 
 
 Worst bottleneck: Northbound, Riverside Dr 
 
 Length of worst bottleneck: .92 mi 
 
 Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 47 
 
 Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 16.2 mph 
 
 The expert opinion: “It’s the most traveled stretch of roadway of Austin and in the state,” says Joe Taylor, traffic reporter for News 8 Austin. “It’s quirky. It was designed for a small town, and we’ve grown into a very large city.” 

 Richard Vogel / AP Photo They are the highways to hell in the country’s most gridlocked cities. The Daily Beast crunches the numbers to determine your ultimate morning nightmares. How did your commute rank? 
 
 Bumper-to-bumper traffic is America’s collective nightmare, and like the movie Groundhog Day it repeats on a daily basis. 
 
 Congestion consumes billions of gallons of fuel, wastes hundreds of billions of dollars in productivity and causes billions of stress headaches. Yet over 100 million automobile commuters each day feel like they have little option. “We put so much of our national wealth and our identity into the whole motoring thing,” says James Howard Kunstler, author of Geography of Nowhere, “that we can’t imagine doing something different.” 
 
 Anthony Downs, author of Stuck in Traffic has identified four reasons for America’s congestion problem, also applicable to most European and Asian economies: first, most of us work during the same hours of the day; second, the country’s economic success has allowed households to buy multiple cars; third, there are more people now than when most roadways were conceived; fourth, more cars means more accidents which means more delays. 
 
 In other words, this problem isn’t going anywhere. So the Daily Beast set out to figure out the worst of the worst. The true Highways to Hell. It was a two-step process, done with data from traffic-tracking firm INRIX, which culls information nationwide from more than 1.5 million GPS units, mostly in freight trucks. 
 
 Our first step was ranking the metropolitan areas with the worst rush-hour congestion. The order is based on the peak hour Travel Time Index (TTI) for the metropolitan area each highway is in. TTI is a measure of how much longer it takes to complete a road journey during peak congestion hours compared to free-flow hours. (Peak hours are defined as 6 a.m. to 10a.m., and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.) Speeds during non-peak hours are used by INRIX to establish this free-flow baseline. 
 
 After determining the 75 worst metro areas, we then found the worst highway in each, defined as the most hours of bottleneck congestion, as reported by INRIX. The rankings then provide a still deeper look—at the most congested bottleneck segment for the worst highway in each area. 
 
 How does your commute fare? Read on. 
 
 #1, Hollywood Freeway, Los Angeles 
 
 Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 686 
 
 Worst bottleneck: Southbound, Vermont Avenue 
 
 Length of worst bottleneck: .64 mi 
 
 Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 77 
 
 Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 14 mph 
 
 The expert opinion: "I recall they would say things like it's a 20-minute trip downtown on the Hollywood Freeway,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief executive Art Leahy says on traffic when he was growing up in Los Angeles. “No one anticipated the congestion that would emerge."
– We all know LA has a traffic problem, but Honolulu? It's No. 2 in the nation, finds the Daily Beast, which crunched the numbers to rank America's 75 worst commutes. Some of the highlights: No. 3, Capital Beltway, Washington, DC: This slow moving route totals an average of 194 hours of congestion per week. "It's a rough road," says a local transportation reporter. No. 6, Cross Bronx Expressway, New York: The city that never sleeps misses the top 5, but the Cross Bronx still sounds pretty bad: "There’s no room to expand, there’s no way to throw in an additional lane or an additional shoulder." Skip it, or don't drive. No. 27, I-10, New Orleans: To the list of the Big Easy's seemingly intractable problems, add gridlock. Click here to see how your commute stacks up.