Surprise! Manila Takes Just 2nd Place For World's Worst Traffic

(SPOT.ph) We believe in celebrating the little victories, so we're doing our best to look at this as a good thing. Hurray: Manila has not taken first place in a global ranking of the world's most congested cities! Based on the 2019 traffic index of TomTom International BV, an Amsterdam-based developer of navigational equipment, Manila takes second place in a ranking of cities with the worst traffic.

The numbers aren't pretty, but here we go: Manila has a 71% congestion level—the same percentage as the list's top-traffic city, Bengaluru in India, though it isn't clear how we managed to escape the top spot. The list ranks 416 cities around the world. In the capital, the study recorded data from around 300 million kilometers worth of pavement, both highways and not. 

Based on the report, the average motorist loses around 30 minutes of their lives to traffic in the morning, and around 40 minutes in the evening. The real rush hour—because let's face it, every hour is rush hour—is at around 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, when congestion levels are at their highest. Fridays from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. are the worst times to travel, with congestion levels at an average of 143%, which might make you really think about your next Friday payday outing.

Annually, Manila motorists lose a total of nearly 11 days to the metropolis' roads. The TomTom report notes that, in that same amount of time, you could have watched 227 episodes of Game of Thrones, read Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (which has 4,211 pages, BTW) nearly twice, knitted 64 hats and 12 sweaters, or, really, just enjoyed life out in the world.