Although the UNAM recently released that we spend 152 hours a year in CDMX traffic, not the worst in the world. Can you guess where it ranks and in which city it is even higher?
According to the recently published Global Traffic Scorecard 2023, the city with the worst traffic in the world is the mighty New York. Can you imagine that?
And just below is our CDMX, which moved up from fourth place in 2022 to second place.
London and Paris took the next two places, respectively. How nice it would be to share that top five (Chicago completes it) with these beautiful, cosmopolitan cities for much better reasons, right?
Contrary to what you might think, Chilango is not the worst traffic in the world, although it is very close.
This index was formed after three years of accumulation of mobility data.
It included travel delays, the cost of getting stuck in traffic jams, trends, and travel patterns in each metropolitan area.
The study was conducted in all world continents, including 37 countries and over 900 cities.
Other data on CDMX traffic derived from the study
When reviewing traffic by continent, CDMX also ranks second with the worst traffic in the Americas, once again surpassed by the iron city.
U.S. and Canadian cities, including Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, occupy the remaining positions in the top ten. Miami, Philadelphia, Toronto, Washington, and Houston round out the list.
To measure travel times, the leading indicator on which the study is based, the average number of hours involved in getting there and back was calculated. The main employment centers in each urban area and the surrounding settlements were taken as reference points. Actual and observed trips were timed.
Thus, it was defined that in our city, we circulate at an average speed of 24 kilometers per hour 😰 in peak hours, which implied a reduction of 3 kilometers since 2023.
In addition, the average speed drops to 19.3 kilometers when traveling one mile (1.6 kilometers) in the downtown Zone.
Did you know that we lose 96 hours a year in traffic jams in this city? The ranking also deduced this.
Obviously, we noticed that other Latin American cities with terrible traffic, such as Bogota (Colombia) or São Paulo (Brazil), are not on the list. We have already asked, and we hope to be able to tell you the reason soon.