Wed 10 Dec 2008
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.
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April 15th, 2009 at 10:16 am
San Francisco, Bay Area has two a day that are over 100 miles long. “Seriously Great Taco” spice blend from Juliet Mae Spices is made near S.F.; do you know where? Think about this; traffic moves through surface streets of S.F. from all major freeway systems and then three lanes into the Golden Gate Bridge. On a good day, one lane will be closed by tourists waiting to park at the overlook. Eat tacos from a San Francisco spice company Juliet Mae Spices.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I have been to around 13 of the cities you mentioned above. I agree, several of them have serious traffic congestion problems, the worst in your list being Bangkok, IMO. But there are two other cities which surpass the ones that I have knowledge of in your list: Cairo, Egypt, and the one that takes the biscuit by far: Bogota, Colombia; driving in the rush hour in Bogota must be similar to taking the crucial final training course to qualify for entry into the SAS…
July 14th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
wow dhats amazing
August 18th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Dubai is far far worse than most developed cities in the world. There’s endless gridlocks and daily 2hr commutes on a 10min journey elsewhere.
This needs updating
September 4th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Ho Chi Minh City or Hannoi???? The bikes are far worse than anything in the US
September 8th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
who know the amounth of Traffic /Km per hour in rush hour of Mexico City?
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:31 am
hello! I am from Kathmandu
here, the population of kathmandu valley is around 4 million. In kathmandu alone we have about 1:3 ratio of vehicles. so you can imagine the situation.With the arrival of new high rise apartments systems /housing.. the ratio of vehicles in the city is still going to rise.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Ever driven in Accra (Ghana) or Lagos (Nigeria) during rush hour? A good chance you’ll experience the meaning of traffic “JAM”.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
The first picture is not from Tokyo. The cars are on the wrong side of the road. How credible is this report?
December 9th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Traffic in Pune (India) is also very bad. Moreover, the suituation in Pune is like virtually there are no rules! Everybody and anybody can drive any vehicle on the road and no one stops anyone. There is no control by the traffic cops seen anywhere. Pleple regularly break signals, no entries and one ways traffic. The situation is highly chaotic and dangerous.
December 22nd, 2009 at 3:08 am
I think Cairo, Egypt should be listed among 20 Cities with worst trafic jam…Its same as Jarkarta Indonesia.
January 15th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
bangkok fucking sucks i spend 2 hours to travel from university to my home which is around 10km far
January 17th, 2010 at 3:38 am
The traffic situation in Hyderabad, India is the most chaotic in the country. A traffic jam in Mumbai or Delhi or any other big city in the world is very orderly when compared to the same in Hyderabad. No one follows the rules in Hyderabad, not even the cops, and i’m no exception. The people here love breaking traffic rules. Bikers here don’t follow the signals, the one-ways, the speed limit. They just zip past the traffic cops. Pay a visit to Hyderabad and you’ll know how different and UNRULY the traffic is in Hyderabad.
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Dubai is the worst, Cairo is better…ive been to both the cities,
how about 3 hrs frm Dubai to Sharjah which is 20 km ?
February 11th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
I’m D’leh from manila, Yes! it is very true how chaotic and dangerous the traffic in our city, though most of the filipino is very discipline, I wish we have a lot of high-tech gadgets to solve our problem.
Hay!! kainis kailang kaya makakasama ang Manila sa mga ma uunlad na bansa sa buong mundo…
February 25th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Neither the pic is from Sao Paulo.
Probably the n. 18 is from Japan. This is a crap article.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
You forgot Istanbul, Turkey.
April 20th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
It’s great and i agree this….but
in india delhi and hyderabad also facing the huge traffic jam problem compare more than Kathmandu,Venezuela and some more cities.
April 21st, 2010 at 1:40 pm
I guess when you did this list…. you never travelled to Lima, Peru, definitely worse traffic than any US city … it was brutal….
May 15th, 2010 at 11:18 am
what about Delhi, India
May 18th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I have seen traffic in LA and Jakarta. I personally think Jakarta is a lot worse than L.A.
June 12th, 2010 at 7:51 am
Definitely the worst traffic is in Bogotá. It´s not only because of the amount of vehicles, but mostly for the aggresiveness of the bus and taxi drivers, mostly. They are outlaws.
June 12th, 2010 at 8:56 am
The picture (on the right) depicting Manila traffic is not of Manila. This article should get its pictures straight
June 13th, 2010 at 12:17 am
No American city belongs on this list. Cairo is easily worse than LA or NY.
June 13th, 2010 at 3:58 am
Anybody ever been to Bucharest ?
That city has some of the worst traffic I’ve experienced and I’ve been to over 20 countries in the 2000′s….
July 2nd, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Car culture has been the undoing of the present civilization.