Some South African commuters are now spending the equivalent of six full days a year in traffic jams, new traffic data shows.
Each year, GPS company TomTom ranks traffic in 390 cities - including several in South Africa. It does so using"floating car data" that it collects from various sources, which it samples to create a global index. puts the UK, India, Ireland, Japan, and Italy as the worst places to drive during rush hour, where an average one-way, 10km commute can take as long as 36 minutes.
Pretoria commuters take an average of 16 minutes to travel just 10km, at an average speed of 32 km/h, according to TomTom. This translates into 145 hours, or six days, spent in rush hour per year - and is 40 seconds longer than the same journey would have taken in 2021. In 2022, Cape Town traffic increased by 1min 10s compared to 2021 - the most significant jump for any South African city. The nearest competitors for year-on-year increases were sitting around the 40-second mark.
On average, it takes Joburg commuters 13 minutes 40 seconds to complete a 10km journey. And residents there spend 123 hours per year in traffic - nearly one full day less per year than Pretoria and 13 hours less than Cape Town.