Beijing shares title for worst commutes
By Belinda Goldsmith |
July 3, 2010, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IF you think your drive to work is bad then spare a thought for commuters in the cities of Beijing, Mexico City and Johannesburg, which top a global poll of the worst driving commutes in the world.
An IBM Commuter Pain Study of 8,192 motorists in 20 cities, released this week, found most commuters -- 67 percent -- said traffic has gotten worse in the past three years and is making them sick and affecting how they do their job.
The survey found 65 percent of people driving to work every day say the journey makes them stressed, angry and reduces their sleep and family time, while 29 percent said traffic was hurting their performance at work or school.
Some cities came out worse than others: 22 percent of commuters in Mexico City take more than an hour a day for a typical one-way trip to work compared with only 2 percent of commuters in New York or Madrid taking that long.
"Cities like Beijing and Mexico City have very long commutes and the uncertainty of the commute is high as one day it can take 45 minutes and the next day two hours," Naveen Lamba, IBM's global leader for intelligent transportation, said.
Rounding out the top 10 of the worst cities for commuters were Moscow, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, Milan, Buenos Aires, Madrid and London.
Lamba said this was the third annual commuter pain survey but the first global poll as the previous two had focused only on US cities.
"When we focused on the United States, the cities you expect -- like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago -- came up as some of the worst commutes ... but in a global context they looked very efficient in terms of transportation," he said.
"Developing cities are growing so fast that you are seeing congestion building up very quickly as opposed to large cities in developed countries where congestion has taken decades to build up, giving officials more time to address the problem."
For example the number of new cars registered in Beijing in the first four months rose almost 24 percent to 248,000, according to the Beijing municipal taxation office.
He said although Beijing topped the list, most commuters in the Chinese capital said the situation was improving after rapid growth in the city caused enormous congestion.
An IBM Commuter Pain Study of 8,192 motorists in 20 cities, released this week, found most commuters -- 67 percent -- said traffic has gotten worse in the past three years and is making them sick and affecting how they do their job.
The survey found 65 percent of people driving to work every day say the journey makes them stressed, angry and reduces their sleep and family time, while 29 percent said traffic was hurting their performance at work or school.
Some cities came out worse than others: 22 percent of commuters in Mexico City take more than an hour a day for a typical one-way trip to work compared with only 2 percent of commuters in New York or Madrid taking that long.
"Cities like Beijing and Mexico City have very long commutes and the uncertainty of the commute is high as one day it can take 45 minutes and the next day two hours," Naveen Lamba, IBM's global leader for intelligent transportation, said.
Rounding out the top 10 of the worst cities for commuters were Moscow, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, Milan, Buenos Aires, Madrid and London.
Lamba said this was the third annual commuter pain survey but the first global poll as the previous two had focused only on US cities.
"When we focused on the United States, the cities you expect -- like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago -- came up as some of the worst commutes ... but in a global context they looked very efficient in terms of transportation," he said.
"Developing cities are growing so fast that you are seeing congestion building up very quickly as opposed to large cities in developed countries where congestion has taken decades to build up, giving officials more time to address the problem."
For example the number of new cars registered in Beijing in the first four months rose almost 24 percent to 248,000, according to the Beijing municipal taxation office.
He said although Beijing topped the list, most commuters in the Chinese capital said the situation was improving after rapid growth in the city caused enormous congestion.
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