TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – This week, the GPS manufacturer TomTom released the results of its annual survey of automobile traffic congestion in 403 cities around the globe, which reveals which cities suffer from the worst traffic conditions.
The TomTom Traffic Index reports that the most inconvenient city to drive in is Mumbai, India where 65% of car trips deal with delays due to traffic congestion.
According to the data collected over the year 2018, Taiwan’s major cities by contrast only deal with about half as much traffic congestion on average. Coming in right next to each other, Kaohsiung and Taipei ranked 57th and 58th globally for their rate of traffic congestion.
The Traffic Index interestingly reports that Kaohsiung has the worst traffic in Taiwan, as Taipei’s rate of traffic congestion dropped 2 percent over the previous year, while Kaohsiung’s stayed the same. However both cities average about the same rate of congestion.
On the global Traffic Index the top ten cities with the highest rates of congestion and delays are as follows.
Other Taiwanese cities on the Traffic Index are Taichung, which ranks 70 th globally for traffic delays, with a two percent improvement over 2017 data.
Tainan comes in at 104th and Taoyuan and 130th. On the regional index for worst automobile congestion in Asia, Kaohsiung ranks 18th, and Taipei ranks 19th. China’s Shanghai comes next at 20th, just before Taichung, which is number 21 on the Asia Traffic Index. Tainan and Taoyuan rank 29th and 32nd, respectively.
The average rate of congestion for Taiwanese cities, calculated using the rates of Kaohsiung, Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, and Taoyuan amounts to a 31.8 percent likelihood a driver will run into traffic delays while driving in a major Taiwanese city.
However, that is still quite a bit better than the cities in Asia with the heaviest traffic in Asia, as indexed by TomTom.
For more detailed information on traffic data from 2018 for each city, please visit the TomTom Traffic Index.
