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Saturday, April 20, 2024

Traffic Congestion a Global Problem.

The TomTom Traffic Index 2016, the annual report detailing the cities around the world with the most traffic congestion has just been released. And the big news this year is that Istanbul has been knocked off the top spot by Mexico City. Drivers in the Mexican capital can expect to spend on average, 59 percent extra travel time stuck in traffic anytime of the day, and up to 103 percent in the evening peak periods versus a free flow, or uncongested, situation, adding-up to 219 hours of extra travel time per year.

Next in the rankings are Bangkok (57 percent), Istanbul (50 percent), Rio de Janeiro (47 percent) and Moscow (44 percent), making up the top five most congested cities in the world.

Using data from 2015, the TomTom Traffic Index looks at the traffic congestion situation in 295 cities in 38 countries on six continents, from Rome to Rio, Singapore to San Francisco. TomTom works with 14 trillion data points that have been accumulated over eight years. This is the fifth year of the TomTom Traffic Index.

Looking at TomTom’s historical data, it’s clear that traffic congestion is up by 13 percent globally since 2008. But, interestingly, there are shocking differences between continents. While North America’s traffic congestion has increased by 17 percent, Europe as has only increased by 2 percent. It could be suggested that this points to economic growth in North America, and economic depression in the rest of Europe. This European figure could be heavily influenced by Southern European countries such as Italy (-7 percent) and Spain (-13 percent) where there has been a marked drop in traffic congestion in the past eight years.

In North America, the most congested cities are:

Mexico City
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Vancouver
New York
Seattle
San Jose
Honolulu
Toronto
Miami

People can find out more about the TomTom Traffic Index, and discover where their home city ranks at www.tomtom.com/trafficindex. There’s also helpful advice on beating traffic congestion, as well as independent analysis. And, for the first time, a selection of “Profile Cities” provide insight into what they are doing to improve mobility.