World Auto News & Reviews

Traffic jam is a real headache for every driver of a big city. While hurrying to work or vacation traffic jams always get on the nerves and ruin psychological health.

1) Tokyo metropolis has many monorails and other kinds of transportation, but it is still a big trouble for the ones to have cars. Probably, that’s why there is Tokyo Traffic Control center working 24 hours a day. This center allows to manipulate traffic lights if any traffic jams occur, it also has 17,000 vehicle detectors. Imagine Tokyo is the biggest city on earth and it has less traffic jams nowadays than other great cities.

2) It is commonly accepted that LA is the most terrible metropolis of traffic jams. Though the city has many highways, freeways and different routs, it is still ranked among the top 10 most congested points in the country.

3) Time Magazine reports São Paulo has the world’s worst traffic jams. Оn May 9, 2008, the historical record was set with 166 miles (266 km) of queues out of 522 miles (835 km). There is an opinion that the problem of traffic congestion occurred due to accelerated rate of motorization since 2003. And people buy about 1000 new cars every day.

4) Many tourist guides can warn the guests of Bangkok about heavy street traffic. Even some new railways and highways couldn’t save the situation. The bicycles can cross the narrow overcrowded streets without any warning, so can some other vehicles. The visitors consider this phenomenon a real traffic chaos.

5) Moscow also has different reasons why traffic jams appear. One of them is frosty severe winter. The transport roads cannot work well because of black ice. The other problem is high quantity of life and, as a result, possession of many vehicles. And apparently some streets must be reconstructed and broadened.

6) Shanghai as many other densely populated cities has the problem of traffic. From 1998 till 2003 the number of private vehicles increased from 7000 up to 170,000.
Many people can afford to have own auto and the streets become crowded.

7) Mumbai traffic jams appear because of many reasons: bad weather (heavy rains), terrible narrow streets, and high quantity of vehicles. Many tourists complain about the air there and it’s not a surprise.

8) To prevent own traffic jams Mexico shortened the quantity of vehicles on some special calendar days. But it apparently doesn’t help.

9) NY is one of the three major US cities with heavy traffic jams. The city always seemed not to have sufficient place. But when most of inhabitants bought cars it lost the rest of free spaces in the streets.

10) Seоul people’s life becomes wealthier and in spite of several Asian car crises, people buy new vehicles. That’s’ why in rush hours there are not enough place for some vehicles.

11) Old ways and routes, newly bought cars altogether played a bad trick on Chicago inhabitants. It’s a great problem to be at workplace in time!

12) As many overcrowded cities Manila is suffering from traffic jams. The “Holland” solution of the problem, i.e. using bicycle transport instead of other vehicles cannot solve the task of traffic jams redundancy.

13) The roads of London are too old to pass so many vehicles per hour.

14) There is no Jakarta without traffic jam at all. More than a hundred new cars appear in Jakarta’s streets each day. Do you think it cannot affect the traffic?

15) As the other Japanese city Osaka cannot “remove” traffic jams at all. Maybe the city will take Tokyo Traffic Control Center system and become the second largest city which could solve the problem.

16) As Venezuela fixed the prices for gas since 1998 you can imagine the number of vehicles appearing on the roads each day. Not speaking about pollution, the traffic jams are terrifying indeed.

17) Athens faced many traffic jam crisis many years. It has a special system of reducing the traffic jams comparative with Mexico system. But the old streets and increasing of population and the vehicles still gets on authorities’ nerves.

18) Though Auckland is not as big as Tokyo it still has the greatest car-ownership ratio after the USA. That’s why congestion in the big centers is a really great problem for the city.

19) The center of Rio de Janeiro can’t manage great traffic jams. The reason is similar with the other listed above: weather condition (rains, flood), high car-ownership rates and the streets which are in need of widening.

20) Kathmandu is called a city of pollution and traffic jams. It’s true for the city is too overcrowded and has too narrow streets. But it’s not the only problem of the city, because there are traffic and higher police. The traffic police have to wait for the other police orders and maybe because of such bureaucracy nobody knows when the traffic jam starts and when it finishes.