Host City Rankings

Score components:

Congestion 35%

Idle Time 15%

Safety 25%

Resilience 25%

5 km stadium zone (60%) + 20 km metro area (40%)

Top Performers

Lowest Scores

Rank	Stadium / City	Cong.	Idle	Safety	Resil.	Composite (all scores 0–10)
1	Gillette Stadium Foxborough, MA	9.6	9.5	6.7	6.2	8.01
2	NRG Stadium Houston, TX	8.8	8.4	7.6	5.7	7.66
3	Estadio Azteca Mexico City	4.4	8.3	8.0	10.0	7.29
4	AT&T Stadium Arlington, TX	9.2	8.8	6.9	3.6	7.18
5	Arrowhead Stadium Kansas City, MO	10.0	9.1	6.1	2.6	7.04

6	Levi’s Stadium Santa Clara, CA	7.8	9.3	3.5	7.6	6.89
7	Hard Rock Stadium Miami Gardens, FL	7.5	8.5	6.5	5.0	6.78
8	Estadio Akron Guadalajara	6.6	9.1	6.8	2.5	6.03
9	MetLife Stadium East Rutherford, NJ	6.8	7.1	6.3	3.1	5.80
10	Lincoln Financial Field Philadelphia, PA	8.3	8.6	3.4	2.5	5.69
11	Estadio BBVA Monterrey	5.3	8.0	6.6	3.5	5.59
12	Mercedes-Benz Stadium Atlanta, GA	7.4	8.6	5.3	0.9	5.44
13	Lumen Field Seattle, WA	7.0	8.9	5.2	1.2	5.39

14	SoFi Stadium Los Angeles, CA	5.4	8.3	5.6	0.9	4.76
15	BC Place Vancouver, BC	5.9	7.3	2.0	3.2	4.46
16	BMO Field Toronto, ON	3.9	7.2	4.0	2.2	3.99

What the score measures

The question we're answering

When tens of thousands of fans descend on a city for the 2026 tournament, how will freight trucks — delivering food, goods, and supplies — be able to get around? This score ranks all 16 host cities on how well their road networks handle large-scale events, based on real vehicle data collected by the Altitude by Geotab platform.

How the score is built

Each city gets a score from 0 to 10, made up of four components: how congested roads normally are (35%), how much time vehicles waste idling (15%), how safely vehicles drive (25%), and how well the city bounced back from past large events (25%). Higher is better. Note that baseline traffic conditions vary naturally across cities — a suburban stadium will have lower ambient congestion than a dense urban one, and those differences are reflected in the scores rather than adjusted away.

The four score components

Congestion 35% of the total score

Measures how smoothly traffic flows near the stadium on a typical weekday. We compare how long it actually takes vehicles to travel each road segment versus how long it would take if everyone drove at the speed limit. We also look at how consistent that travel time is day-to-day — because predictability matters just as much as speed.

Three sub-measures are combined: (1) average travel delay relative to the speed limit — 50% of the congestion score; (2) the fraction of hours where average speeds reach at least 70% of the posted speed limit — 25%; and (3) day-to-day travel time variability — 25%. All measured at 5 km and 20 km radii around each stadium.

Idle Time 15% of the total score

Measures how much time vehicles spend stationary with their engine running — stuck in traffic, waiting at loading docks, or caught in stop-and-go conditions. Less idling means more efficient freight movement and less wasted fuel.

Scored on a sliding scale anchored at 20 minutes per vehicle per day (a full score of 10) and dropping to zero at 120 minutes per day. Any city where vehicles idle less than 20 minutes also receives a full score. We use the median daily idle figure to quantify normal idling behavior. The 20-minute lower bound reflects typical freight operations in accessible areas; 120 minutes represents heavily congested urban environments where vehicles spend significant time stuck with engines running.

Safety 25% of the total score

Measures how safely vehicles drive near each stadium. We track three types of risky behavior: speeding (going more than 20% above the posted speed limit), harsh acceleration, and harsh braking. Each city is then ranked against the others — so the city with the fewest incidents gets a perfect score, and the city with the most gets a lower score.

All three measures are normalized across all 16 cities using min-max scaling, then averaged equally. Data covers all vehicle types on weekdays in June and July 2025 within each stadium’s radius zones.

Resilience 25% of the total score

Measures how well the road network holds up during a big event. For each stadium, we looked at past large-scale events (major sports games and concerts) and compared traffic volumes on event days to similar non-event days. Cities where traffic barely changed — or returned to normal quickly — score higher.

We also check whether disruption stays close to the stadium or spreads across the metro area. If disruption spreads widely, the resilience score is reduced by up to 10%. Resilience scores are capped at 10 — a score of 10 means the freight network showed no meaningful degradation across the qualifying events analyzed.

Two geographic zones, one blended score

Stadium zone

60%

Within 5 km of the stadium

Metro zone

40%

Within 20 km of the stadium

Final component score

Blended score

Applied to each of the four components before calculating the composite

Every score component is measured at both scales independently, then combined: 60% of the weight goes to the area immediately around the stadium (5 km), and 40% goes to the broader metro area (20 km). This means a city that handles stadium-area traffic well but struggles across the metro will see that reflected in its score.

How each component contributes to each city’s final score

Congestion (35%)

Idle Time (15%)

Safety (25%)

Resilience (25%)

🇺🇸 Gillette Stadium
Foxborough, MA

8.01

🇺🇸 NRG Stadium
Houston, TX

7.66

🇲🇽 Estadio Azteca
Mexico City

7.29

🇺🇸 AT&T Stadium
Arlington, TX

7.18

🇺🇸 Arrowhead Stadium
Kansas City, MO

7.04

🇺🇸 Levi’s Stadium
Santa Clara, CA

6.89

🇺🇸 Hard Rock Stadium
Miami Gardens, FL

6.78

🇲🇽 Estadio Akron
Guadalajara

6.03

🇺🇸 MetLife Stadium
East Rutherford, NJ

5.80

🇺🇸 Lincoln Financial Field
Philadelphia, PA

5.69

🇲🇽 Estadio BBVA
Monterrey

5.59

🇺🇸 Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Atlanta, GA

5.44

🇺🇸 Lumen Field
Seattle, WA

5.39

🇺🇸 SoFi Stadium
Los Angeles, CA

4.76

🇨🇦 BC Place
Vancouver, BC

4.46

🇨🇦 BMO Field
Toronto, ON

3.99

Each bar is split into four colored segments showing how much each component contributes to the final score. A full bar represents a perfect score of 10.0. Longer bars overall indicate higher-scoring cities.

What is Altitude by Geotab?

Altitude by Geotab is a commercial vehicle intelligence platform that turns anonymized, aggregated telematics data into actionable insights about how freight and transportation networks perform. Powered by one of the world’s largest connected vehicle datasets, Altitude helps researchers, planners, and businesses understand traffic conditions, freight movement, and network efficiency across North America and beyond.

Altitude data is derived from millions of real commercial vehicle trips — GPS traces, speed readings, acceleration events, and idle-time records — collected through Geotab’s fleet management platform. All data is anonymized and aggregated before analysis. No individual vehicle operator or driver can be identified from the results.

How Altitude data powers this analysis

This report uses three types of data from the Altitude platform to score each of the 16 host stadiums:

Trip-level telematics

Anonymized records from vehicles traveling near each stadium, used to measure travel speeds, idle time, and driving behavior.

Road network mapping

Altitude's Snap-to-Road technology matches GPS traces to the actual road network, enabling precise comparison of observed speeds vs. posted limits.

Event impact analysis

Traffic volumes on past major event days compared to similar non-event days, revealing how resilient each city's freight network is under stadium pressure.

Baseline period: Weekdays in June and July 2025, excluding national holidays in the US, Canada, and Mexico (Canada Day, July 4th).

Event analysis: Major stadium events identified from each venue's schedule, through April 2026. A minimum of two qualifying events per stadium is required to produce a resilience score.

Geographic coverage: All measurements are taken at two radii around each stadium — a 5 km stadium zone and a 20 km metro zone — and blended into a single score (60% / 40%).

Non-affiliation notice

This analysis is produced independently by Altitude by Geotab and is intended for informational and research purposes. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by FIFA, U.S. Soccer, Canada Soccer, the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol, or any World Cup organizing body. The term “World Cup” is used solely to identify the relevant sporting event. Stadium names reflect their common commercial names. Scores and rankings are based on Altitude by Geotab’s own methodology and do not represent any official evaluation.

How to read this table: All scores — composite and sub-scores — run from 0 to 10 (higher is better). The composite score blends four components — Congestion (35%), Idle Time (15%), Safety (25%), and Resilience (25%) — measured within 5 km of each stadium (60% weight) and 20 km (40% weight). A strong resilience score can offset a weaker congestion score — for example, a city where freight networks bounce back quickly from events may rank higher than one with less congestion but poorer adaptability. Source: Altitude by Geotab commercial vehicle telematics — Jun–Jul 2025 weekday baseline; event resilience through Apr 2026. Safety includes speeding (above 1.2× posted speed limit), harsh acceleration, and harsh braking rates per 1,000 traversals, normalized across all 16 stadiums.