PHOENIX — Rain or shine, the city of Scottsdale is the fourth-best U.S. city to drive in, according to a recent nationwide study.
It was featured in WalletHub’s “Best & Worst Cities to Drive in (2025),” which stacked up the top 100 most-populated towns and compared them based on the four categories of cost of ownership and maintenance, traffic and infrastructure, safety and access to vehicles and maintenance.
Three other Valley cities cracked the top 25 for roadway safety, with Chandler and Gilbert coming in 16th and 17th and Mesa at 22nd.
The trio of towns ranked ahead of Scottsdale were Corpus Christi, Texas, Greensboro, North Carolina and Boise, Idaho. Notably, the state of Texas had six of the study’s top 10.
How was Scottsdale’s driving environment graded?
Despite a sub-par ranking in cost of ownership and maintenance (No. 54), Scottsdale took home the top prize for traffic and infrastructure and had two other solid performances in the remaining two graded categories (18th in safety and 26th in access to vehicles and maintenance).
Of the 30 subcategories, Scottsdale excelled in two in particular, as it has the fifth-lowest accident likelihood and the fourth-lowest car theft rate. Gilbert and Chandler also showed out as the U.S. cities with the lowest and fifth-lowest car theft rate.
While just awarded an above-average overall ranking (No. 32), Tucson was tied for lowest auto maintenance costs in the country, with second overall-ranked Greensboro as one of several cities that shared that distinction.
Other subcategories in the study were cost of a new car, average monthly car insurance premium, average commute time by car, quality of roads, traffic fatality rate per 100,000 population and auto-repair shops per capita.
The cities that occupied the unwanted bottom five spots were as follows from 96th to 100th: Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Oakland, California and Philadelphia.
This year, Scottsdale has already been ranked among the top American cities for starting a career and recreation.
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