Adrian Morrow
Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:01PM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:42PM EDT
It's more aggravating to commute in Toronto than in New York, Los Angeles or Berlin – and it's only gotten worse over the past few years, according to a new survey.
IBM released the Commuter Pain Index, a study of more than 20 cities across the globe Wednesday. The report surveyed more than 8,000 commuters on a range of issues including commuting time, whether driving was hurting their health and if commuting caused them to be less productive.
While the top ranks were mostly filled by cities in the developing world (Beijing fared worst) and Toronto ranked 12th worst overall, 64 per cent of Torontonians surveyed said traffic had gotten worse in the past three years. Only commuters in Johannesburg were more likely to say things weren't improving.
Overall, 57 per cent of respondents around the world said traffic was affecting their health.
“It comes back to the trend towards more people living in urban centres,” said Pat Horgan, an IBM vice-president. “Urbanization happens faster than their infrastructure can catch up.”
The consequences are stark, Mr. Horgan said: poorer health, lost productivity and economic stagnation.
There's no easy fix. IBM advocates a wide range of solutions including better public transit, more information for commuters and flexible work hours to reduce bottlenecks on the roads at rush hours.
“We can't just afford to build more lanes of traffic,” Mr. Horgan said.
The cities doing the best job of managing traffic are the ones already implementing such multi-faceted strategies, Mr. Horgan said. Singapore, for instance, has been synchronizing traffic lights while Melbourne has rapidly expanded its light rail transit system.
Perhaps most tellingly, Mr. Horgan points out, commuters in cities with longer travel times than Toronto seem to be feeling less pain than Torontonians. The reason?
“In those cities, people can see that things are getting better,” he said.
Ranking of the emotional and economic toll of commuting in each city on a scale of one to 100, with 100 being the most onerous:
- Beijing: 99
- Mexico City: 99
- Johannesburg: 97
- Moscow: 84
- New Delhi: 81
- Sao Paolo: 75
- Milan: 52
- Buenos Aires: 50
- Madrid: 48
- London: 36
- Paris: 36
- Toronto: 32
- Amsterdam: 25
- Los Angeles: 25
- Berlin: 24
- Montreal: 23
- New York: 19
- Houston: 17
- Melbourne: 17
- Stockholm: 15
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