Mexico's capital is world's most congested city
You think traffic in your city is bad? It could be worse. Unless you're a commuter in Bucharest – the city with the slowest traffic in Europe. Only four cities on other continents do worse; Mexico City (pictured) is the place with the planet's most congested traffic.
Mapping and navigation services provider TomTom has ranked 189 cities worldwide for the state of their congestion problem. Using data collected over nine years up to 2016, the company rated each city for the extra time it takes to get from A to B compared to a free-flow situation.
Bucharest, to use that example, scores 50%. This means that it typically takes 90 minutes to get somewhere, whereas it would only take an hour in a free-flow situation. TomTom data shows the situation got 7% worse compared to the previous year; and that extra time needed to reach a destination increases by 90% during morning rush hour, and 98% in the evening peak.
Below are the 10 worst cities for the three major continents (# indicates global ranking; last two figures indicate traffic time increase during morning and evening peaks):
AMERICAS
#1 Mexico City, Mexico 66% (+7%) 96% 101%
#8 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 47% (0%) 63% 81%
#12 Los Angeles, USA 45% (+4%) 62% 84%
#17 Santiago, Chile 43% (n/a) 73% 88%
#19 Buenos Aires, Argentina 42% (n/a) 64% 68%
#28 Salvador, Brazil 40% (-3%) 63% 70%
#30 San Francisco, USA 39% (+3%) 55% 73%
#34 Vancouver, Canada 39% (+5%) 54% 72%
#43 Recife, Brazil 37% (-6%) 60% 65%
#47 Fortaleza, Brazil 35% (+2%) 56% 57%
ASIA
#2 Bangkok, Thailand 61% (+4%) 91% 118%
#3 Jakarta, Indonesia 58% (n/a) 63% 95%
#4 Chongqing, China 52% (+14%) 90% 94%
#7 Chengdu, China 47% (+6%) 74% 79%
#9 Tainan, Taiwan 46% (+10%) 51% 71%
#10 Beijing, China 46% (+8%) 72% 84%
#11 Changsha, China 45% (+8%) 70% 82%
#14 Guangzhou, China 44% (+7%) 58% 85%
#15 Shenzhen, China 44% (+7%) 62% 84%
#16 Hangzhou, China 43% (+5%) 61% 64%
EUROPE
#5 Bucharest, Romania 50% (+7%) 90% 98%
#6 Istanbul, Turkey 49% (-1%) 63% 91%
#13 Moscow, Russia 44% (0%) 71% 94%
#21 Saint Petersburg, Russia 41% (+1%) 65% 90%
#25 London, UK 40% (+2%) 64% 68%
#26 Marseille, France 40% (+2%) 62% 75%
#27 Rome, Italy 40% (+2%) 74% 68%
#35 Paris, France 38% (+2%) 68% 66%
#37 Brussels, Belgium 38% (+3%) 71% 77%
#39 Manchester, UK 38% (+1%) 68% 79%
For the entire ranking, check this page at TomTom.
Image: Ralf Roletschek, GFDL 1.2