Yesterday, TomTom released its annual Traffic Index which analyzes more than 200 cities around the world to determine traffic congestion in specific cities and areas during certain times of the day. Unsurprisingly, evening congestion was the most congested time of day pretty much everywhere around the world. In fact, the average commuter spent an extra 100 hours sitting in evening rush hour traffic in 2014.
Here are the top 10 cities that TomTom found to have the worst traffic in 2014:
- Istanbul
- Moscow
- St. Petersburg
- Mexico City
- Chongquing
- Recife
- Bucharet
- Rio de Janiero
- Senzhen
- Los Angeles
TomTom also created a fun infographic showing the ‘congestion levels’ which basically indicates how much longer rush hour traffic is during peak times.
TomTom, of course, isn’t just giving out this information because it’s interesting (although it certainly makes me feel better about my city’s rush hour). With this analysis comes a stream of PR-related information about TomTom Traffic and how it uses all of this realtime data to help consumers avoid potential traffic snarls. I’ve used some of the traffic routing, and it actually is pretty decent, but not necessarily that much better than anything else in my experience. I suppose it depends on how bad the traffic is where you live, as mine isn’t really all that awful.
Do you use traffic on your GPS? Does it help? Let me know in the comments!