Comparison website numbeo.com – in its mid-year update for 2015, ranked the capital of Thailand top of the jams in Southeast Asia. Bangkok’s ‘Traffic Index’ of 255.06 points places it ahead of Manila (231.09), Jakarta (224.24), Kuala Lumpur (205.24), Singapore (175.31) and Ho Chi Minh City (112.36).
The definition of its ‘Traffic Index’ – is a composite index of time consumed in traffic due to job commute, estimation of time consumption dissatisfaction, CO2 consumption estimation in traffic and overall inefficiencies in the traffic system.
If you want to sample the world’s worst traffic the head to India, where Kolkata (366.69) holds the title of the city with the world’s worst traffic.
When looking solely at commuting times, Numbeo has created what is calls a “Time Exp. Index” which it says is an estimation of dissatisfaction due to long commute times. It assumes that the dissatisfaction of commute times increases exponentially with each minute after one way commute time is longer than 25 minutes.
It’s not all bad news. Globally Bangkok (6828.07) does slightly better when its traffic is assessed and is ranked 12th globally by this measure however it still ranks as top of the list for Southeast Asia in terms of the frustration we all feel when stuck in traffic. Head to Mumbai in India, which tops this category, if you want to be really frustrated.
We knew it anyway but now it’s official – Bangkok’s traffic is really, really bad.