Results of the latest TomTom Traffic Index have ranked Pretoria as the worst South African city for rush-hour commuting, surpassing Cape Town, which has slipped into second place.
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According to TomTom, commuters in Pretoria spend an average of 16 minutes to travel 10km at a speed of 32kph. This is the equivalent of 145 hours (or six days) spent in rush hour per year, which is 40 seconds longer than what the same journey would’ve taken in 2021.
In Cape Town, the same 10km trip takes just 30 seconds less, translating into about five and a half full days or 132 hours per year stuck in traffic.
News24 reports that Cape Town’s traffic increased by one minute and 10 seconds between 2021 and 2022, which represents the most significant spike for any South African city – the nearest competitors for year-on-year increases remained at the 40-second mark.
TomTom’s study also revealed that Johannesburg’s traffic is slow to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic, likely as a result of lingering work-from-home policies. The city has historically been Cape Town’s largest traffic competitor as per the index, though the 2022 index placed it in fifth place nationally, behind East London and Bloemfontein.
Statistics indicate that it takes commuters in Johannesburg 13 minutes and 40 seconds to complete a 10km journey. Residents spend an average of 123 hours in traffic each year. This is nearly one full day less per year than Pretoria and 13 hours less than Cape Town.
Durban has been highlighted as the city with the lowest congestion levels in the country (of all the South African cities that TomTom measures). Commuters spend about 12 minutes and 20 seconds to cover 10km and spend 112 hours in traffic per year.
Though these statistics indicate that rush hour traffic is still a headache in major South African cities, the data is still not on par with 2019 levels. At the time – before working from home became the norm – Capetonians spent 154 hours in traffic, about 22 hours more than they did in 2022. Commuters in Pretoria are still worse off though – they spent 131 hours in traffic each year, and this number increased by 14 hours to 145 in 2022.
The index also measured commuters’ petrol spend and estimated a congested 10km commute in Pretoria’s city centre to cost R1 267 per year. Drivers in Cape Town are estimated to fork out R985 for the same length of traffic, Johannesburg drivers R1 285 and Durban commuters R1 018.
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