Stuck in Traffic

I love Mexico City, but the one thing I truly hate about it is the traffic.  It seems to be a city of perpetual rush hour.  Once I was driving with Alejandro from his office to his house.  The traffic was especially bad that evening, and we were closing in on two hours on the road.  I pointed out to him that back in Ohio in that amount of time I could have driven from my home in suburban Cleveland to Columbus... a trip of about 130 miles down the interstate. 

This morning on the internet I saw one of those lists that constantly appear.  This one was "The World's Worst Driving Cities".  I figured that Mexico City had to be on the list, and I clicked on it to see where it ranked.  The list contained 25 cities, and the ranking was based on the number of hours a driver wasted in 2018 sitting in stalled traffic.

Mexico City was number nine.  It is the most congested city in North America.  In the center of the city, the average speed of traffic is 9 miles per hour.  The typical Mexico City driver loses  218 hours of his / her life each year stuck in traffic.

The cities that are worse than Mexico City included some surprises.  Bordeaux, France was one place above at number 8, and Dublin, Ireland was number 3.   I wasn't surprised by Paris at number 5, or Rome at number 2.  (I've never been to Rome, but I've heard that traffic is a nightmare.)  According to the list, the most congested city in the world is Bogotá, Colombia, where a driver spends 272 hours in snarled traffic.