The most frustrating point to be made to someone sitting in traffic is “you’re not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic”.

Watching cars go by on any of the highways heading east out of Cape Town’s CBD, one can understand just why the traffic is so congested: count how many cars have more than one person in it. I promise, it won’t take you long to fill up ten fingers.

Living in Observatory, the drive home should take around ten minutes. However, it can take over 40 minutes.

You see, ranked 47th in the world, Cape Town comes out top as South Africa’s most congested city – and the cause is probably because we’re the favourited international tourist destination. This is according to the TomTom Traffic Index Report released at the end of March, which uses information gathered from 295 cities in 38 countries. According to TomTom, global congestion has increased 13% since 2008.

While Johannesburg and East London follow the Mother City, globally Mexico City was classified as the most congested city in the world – followed by Bangkok, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro and Moscow.

Cape Town has a Traffic Index of 30%, which means that drivers will experience an average increase of trip length of 30% throughout the day. During the morning peak period, Capetonians can expect to add an additional 71% to free flowing travel time.

The growing congestion on Cape Town roads is having an adverse effect on businesses, forcing many to consider relocating or changing office hours to avoid the worst of morning and evening peak-hour traffic. The Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry said:

It seems we are no longer dealing with rush hours but rush periods which can last for two or three hours.

That’s pretty obvious, as traffic leaving the city can start from around 3pm.

Last year the City of Cape Town said it would spend R750m over five years to ease its mounting traffic problem. The money would be spent on improving infrastructure along major routes, mayor Patricia de Lille said at the time.

So what can we do?

We really want everybody to think about how they can lower the amount of time they waste in traffic every day — and to realise that we all need to play a part. If even just 5% of us changed our travel plans, we would improve travel times on our major highways by up to 30%.

Carpool, public transport and, well, getting a Vespa. Our very own Henk got a Vespa this year and it takes him 15 minutes to get to Observatory in peak traffic. Zipping through the cars, sometimes I’d rather opt for a ride home with him and there’s nothing better than feeling the rush of the wind as you drive past stationary cars.

Seriously, it’s worth considering and if you want a Vespa 2OV can get you a special deal. Just email editor@2oceansvibe.com with the subject I want to beat the traffic and we’ll hook you up.

[source: bdlive]