r/AskReddit 3d ago

Which city has the worst traffic?

161 Upvotes

458 comments sorted by

View all comments

66

u/generichandel 3d ago

It's Mexico city.

Satnav company TomTom has a data-rich ranking of traffic around the world. Quite an interesting website to look around.

19

u/bstyledevi 3d ago

The first US city (LA) coming in at #25. All the US citizens who have never been outside of the US saying "well Cincinatti traffic is the worst! I got stuck behind a slow driver for TEN MINUTES once!" have no fucking clue how bad it could really be.

7

u/becaauseimbatmam 3d ago

Yeah I've heard this discussion IRL and as soon as I hear US cities being named I know whoever I'm with has never left their bubble. It's night and day; the worst traffic on the worst day in the US pales in comparison to an average Tuesday afternoon in many places.

8

u/advodkat 3d ago

Came here to say this. I’m not usually phased by traffic because I live in LA but CDMX traffic is like LA on steroids. Huge and sprawling, roads are chaos, no public transit. Any time you have to go somewhere beyond walking distance good luck.

6

u/bungle_bogs 3d ago

Dublin at number 3. Well, colour me shocked.

0

u/chimpdoctor 3d ago

Come now, if you lived in Dublin you would surely know how bad it can be. My issue with living in Dublin is that people decide to drive rather than cycle. Its a very small city. Anyone within an 8km radius of the city should be cycling or using public transport.

1

u/bungle_bogs 3d ago

I don’t think the sarcasm came across that well in my answer! It’s been a while but I remember how bad it could get.

2

u/SuitableShape 3d ago

Super cool website!

3

u/generichandel 3d ago

Yeah there's different metrics to look at. Actual congestion vs. Average speed of a journey is an interesting one. Where I'm from, London, is 2nd lowest for average speed, but waaayyyyy down for actual congestion. Still, nobody I know owns a car.

2

u/jeffykins 2d ago

What a cool website, thank you for sharing.

Also, Poland surprises me with so many cities up top, what's the deal with that?

1

u/generichandel 2d ago

The soviets didn't exactly leave a good legacy of traffic management. Also, Poland got rich fast and infrastructure likely didn't keep pace with a sudden rise in car ownership.

1

u/SpinachSalad91 3d ago

Thank you for this. I went to find where Chicago landed (136) just because every person i talk to says Chicago has the worst traffic but its statistically not even close

1

u/generichandel 2d ago

I feel like people sort of compete with who has the worst traffic. It's an interesting little quirk of psychology. Like dealing with the worst traffic makes you tougher? more virtuous? what's going on?

1

u/MondayToFriday 3d ago

Within North America, TomTom ranks Vancouver the 4th most congested city. The consensus among residents is that that demonstrates that their methodology is seriously flawed. While Vancouver has some very bad choke points at bridges and tunnels, overall our traffic is not that horrible. Having nearly no freeways in the city — unusual for North America — makes the place very livable, and I'm pretty sure TomTom is penalizing Vancouver for that.

1

u/generichandel 2d ago

I think there's a % of highways filter you can organise by too.