The worst traffic jams in the world

Since the build up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the city council of Beijing have been waging a constant war with cars, and losing. Beijing is home to 17 million residents with 4.7 million cars on the road. But keep in mind that being a major city, vehicles from neighbouring cities as well as delivery trucks travel into Beijing everyday, thus the actual number of cars in Beijing is far higher than that. Just as little as 15 years ago, private car ownership is a rarity and bicycles dotted the city landscape. Today Beijing is the biggest market in the biggest single country car market in the world; China. 13.6 million vehicles were sold in China in 2009, versus 9.4 million in USA. In 2009, almost 580,000 vehicles were registered in Beijing alone. To put it into perspective, Malaysia sells only around 550,000 cars a year. In 2010, spurred by government incentive to boost consumer spending in a slowing global economy, vehicle sales in Beijing was boosted to almost 850,000, bringing the total cars registered in Beijing to around 4.7 million. Theoretically, Beijing's road networks can only support up to around 6.7 million vehicles. However even at today's rate, some of the major highways and roads in Beijing are operating well beyond their capacity. Construction of new roads can never keep up with the rate Beijing residents are buying cars.

Still, car ownership rate in Beijing is still far lower than major cities of Tokyo and Los Angeles, the other capitals of traffic jams in the world. The problem in China is that the city's motorization growth rate is simply too fast for city planners and road construction works to keep up. Beijing already has some of the best public bus and train networks in Asia, but it is still grossly insufficient for a city of its size. In August this year, Beijing hit the news by obtaining the dubious record of having the longest traffic jam in history. An almost 100km long jam in the Beijing-Tibet Highway, also known as China National Highway 110 that went on for almost 20 days. It dispersed intermittently but by September another jam stretching 60km appeared again on the same stretch. The jam was so bad that vehicles only moved as little as a couple of hundred meters in a day. Truck drivers resorted to taking naps underneath their trucks, played card games and cleaned themselves by the roadside. It took some drivers up to 5 days just to cover 100km. It's absolutely crazy. This is the mother of all traffic jams.



Images from Associated Press. Truck drivers trapped in the jam for days cleaned, took naps, played cars by the roadside.

I guess that was the last straw that broke the camel's back. This month, Beijing announced its latest and most drastic offensive to date - new vehicle registrations will be capped at 240,000 cars or 20,000 cars a month. It is a drastic move because this will effectively put a lot of car dealers out of business, especially those who did not invest in a 3S facility but only rely on new vehicle sales for their revenue. Close to 70% of potential new car sales will be lost. Obviously this will not go down well with the industry. Beijing is literally going into war with the car industry. Of course there is still the option of registering a car in neighbouring cities. However at present, Beijing already imposed a law that foreign registered cars are banned from certain busy highways / roads like the 5th Ring Road highway during rush hour. This regulation is expected to be further extended to other major road networks within Beijing. Vehicles with a yellow label emission compliance sticker stuck on them will also be banned by 2012 when China gazettes a higher National 5 emission standard that is similar to Euro V. With that, about 120,000 higher polluting old cars will be removed from the road. Other traffic control methods like congestion charge, and limiting access to vehicles on certain days by their last registration plate digit (even / odd numbers) are also being considered.

Recently, IBM commissioned a survey amongst drivers in 20 cities to interview them about their experience with city traffic. Cities covered are Beijing, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Moscow, New Delhi, Sao Paolo, Milan, Buenos Aires, Madrid, London, Paris, Toronto, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Berlin, Montreal, New York, Houston, Melbourne, Stockholm. I guess IBM wanted to keep the geographical coverage of the survey small whilst maintaining sufficient representation from all continents. Because a majority of cities with the worst traffic are in rapidly developing Asian economies. And no study on traffic congestion is ever complete without mentioning Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, Bangkok and Jakarta. Especially Bangkok and Jakarta.

Click to enlarge.


The survey was part of a marketing effort by IBM's Global Business Services unit to promote its Traffic Prediction Tool as well as consultation services in setting up integrated monitoring systems for intelligent transport system (ITS). IBM's Traffic Prediction Tool is currently being tested by Singapore's Land Transport Authority in developing a system that provides hourly traffic prediction.

There isn't any single standard methodology to gauge and compare traffic data across different cities. As collection of such data is dependent on the highway management or city council. What constitutes a jam? For what interval period / distance should the average speed be taken? For how long and between what time is rush hour? Which part of the year and weather season? Putting technicalities aside, generally the top cities with the worst traffic in the world are the cities below, in no particular order.

Top cities with the worst traffic jams, some of these were not included in IBM's survey, and listed in no particular order.
Beijing. Picture below is showing the 3rd Ring Road Highway


Shanghai


Mumbai


New Delhi


Sao Paolo


Moscow


Bangkok


Jakarta


Ho Chih Minh city


Cairo


Both Paris and London are some of the oldest cities in Europe. Road expansion, especially in the highly congested inner city / central area is extremely difficult. South-West London is the worst while in Paris', the famed Arc de Triomphe 7-lane wide roundabout is a free for all mayhem. Foreign drivers can spend their time circling around forever without getting out of the trap. Paris is dotted with dirty looking cars with dinged fenders and all. Bump-stop is how Parisians get their tiny Peugeots and Citroen hatchbacks into those ridiculously tight parking spots. Cars will scrape paint and rub fenders switching lanes along the Arc de Triomphe but everyone is cool about it. But the Parisians have a very positive outlook on life. Unlike Londoners, Parisians have very little care for their cars. This is after all a nation where people spend two hours on lunch drinking wine. To the French, enjoying good company with good food, and good wine is far more important that being concerned about cars.

Paris
Arc de Triomphe, viewed from the famous Champs-Élysées street heading into the roundabout.


London


Lahore


As for KL-ites and Penang-ites who complain about the jam in Federal Highway, hot spots along LDP, SMART Tunnel, and Penang bridge, as well Singaporeans who complain about the crawl along CTE or PIE etc etc, well you ain't experienced no jam until you've experienced being stuck for hours, in a taxi in rush hour Bangkok or Jakarta. In the case of Bangkok, you have the option to get down, hop onto a motorcycle taxi (yes they have that in Bangkok, and the locals call it motorsai). Even tuk-tuks are useless in such traffic conditions. Hanging on your dear lives as these "motorsai" bike taxis weave in and out the massive "car park" of central Bangkok, adrenaline junkies would want to add this on their to-do list.