TomTom Traffic Index measures traffic congestion worldwide and came up with this ranking based on the traffic data collected over years.
Methodology
Their point being that if a person would take a certain amount of time to travel from point A to B in a non-congested route or network, the congestion would be ranked by how much extra travel time it was taking for the same distance and the same conditions. The rankings are based on 390 cities and 48 countries and together, the data amounts to 730,000 hours of extra driving time. All these cities have populations of more than 800,000 people and some have changed positions from last year.
UAE
Dubai and Abu Dhabi are on the relatively better side of the spectrum with an extra travel time of 29 and 20 per cent respectively. In Dubai, on an average, it would take you an extra driving time of 26 minutes (14 minutes for Abu Dhabi) for every hour of non-traffic congested driving per day. In the evening peak times, this increases drastically, taking almost 50 per cent more time to get to the same place, while in Abu Dhabi this figure is 25 per cent.
In this table the change indicated with a '+' symbol is a negative difference (increase in overall driving time) while the '-' symbol indicates an improvement.
| Ranking | City | Country | Extra travel time | Change in 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico City | Mexico | 66 per cent | +7 per cent |
| 2 | Bangkok | Thailand | 61 per cent | +4 per cent |
| 3 | Jakarta | Indonesia | 58 per cent | |
| 4 | Chongqing | China | 52 per cent | +14 per cent |
| 5 | Bucharest | Romania | 50 per cent | |
| 6 | Istanbul | Turkey | 49 per cent | -1 per cent |
| 7 | Chengdu | China | 47 per cent | +6 per cent |
| 8 | Rio De Janeiro | Brazil | 47 per cent | |
| 9 | Tainan | Taiwan | 46 per cent | +10 per cent |
| 10 | Beijing | China | 46 per cent | +8 per cent |
On the other end of the spectrum, the best ranked cities are all from the United States of America including Dayton, Knowxville, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Omaha Council-Buffs (in that order) with just around 9 per cent to 11 per cent of extra driving time. Riyadh in Saudi Arabia is ranked best in the Middle East with an average extra driving time of 27 per cent.
