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The most congested city in South Africa – and the plans to fix it

Cape Town is the most congested city in South Africa, and one of the most congested in the world, with motorists losing an average of 94 hours a year sitting in traffic.

This is according to the 2024 INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, which analyses and ranks transportation data for more than 900 different cities.

The busiest city in Africa

Cape Town placed seventh on the congestion rankings in the latest data, two spots up from the year prior.

This means that Cape Town now has worse traffic than other famously gridlocked cities such as Los Angeles and Jakarta.

These were the top 10 worst-performing urban centres in 2024, according to INRIX’s data.

  1. Istanbul – 105 hours
  2. New York City – 102 hours
  3. Chicago – 102 hours
  4. London – 101 hours
  5. Mexico City – 97 hours
  6. Paris – 97 hours
  7. Cape Town – 94 hours
  8. Jakarta – 89 hours
  9. Los Angeles – 88 hours
  10. Brisbane – 84 hours

Based on this ranking, Cape Town is the most congested city on the African continent, though it’s worth noting that other notoriously busy hubs like Nigeria’s Lagos and Egypt’s Cairo were not included in the dataset.

In any case, Cape Town does not compare favourably to other metros such as Paris and London – the most jampacked capitals in Europe – which are only three and seven hours worse off, respectively.

As for how the Mother City compares to the rest of South Africa, these were the 10 most congested cities in the country last year:

  1. Cape Town – 94 hours
  2. Johannesburg – 55 hours
  3. Pretoria – 45 hours
  4. Durban – 35 hours
  5. Pietermaritzburg – 33 hours
  6. Port Elizabeth – 30 hours
  7. East London – 27 hours
  8. Bloemfontein – 24 hours
  9. Vanderbijlpark – 13 hours
  10. Welkom – 6 hours

Drivers in the southern tip of Africa are spending about 70% more time in bumper-to-bumper conditions than those living in our financial hub.

Those 94 hours represent the equivalent of 3.9 days being lost sitting in the car, while commuters in Joburg are still losing a considerable 2.2 days.

Most cities also experienced an increase in traffic from 2023 to 2024, which INRIX attributes to a global trend of individuals returning to the workplace as companies revert from their pandemic-related work-from-home policies.

Cape Town’s roads were 13% more crowded in 2024 while Durban was 17% worse off, though Joburg experienced no significant changes over the last year.

The report goes on to say that congestion is both a good and a bad sign for a city’s financial profile, as heavy traffic is a sign of high economic activity.

On the other hand, it incurs a substantial cost in the form of lost productivity, with one example – the United States – losing an estimated $771 (R14,754) per driver per year as a result of traffic.

This hidden cost to the economy can exacerbate other issues such as transportation costs, contributing towards inflation and higher shelf prices.

Cape Town’s plans for quieter roads

The City of Cape Town recently confirmed that it has allocated R444 million towards congestion relief projects over the next three-year budget cycle.

One of the biggest projects has been the expansion of the MyCiti bus service, which now covers 40 routes including trunk routes, direct routes, and feeder routes to and from the following areas:

  • Atlantis
  • Camps Bay
  • Central Business District
  • Century City
  • Dunoon
  • Hout Bay
  • Khayelitsha
  • Melkbosstrand
  • Milnerton
  • Mitchells Plain
  • Phoenix
  • Salt River
  • Table View
  • Woodstock

It also noted that the MyCiti N2 Express service between Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha, and the Civic Centre station is one of the busiest routes in the city, providing communities with scheduled, safe, and affordable transport.

City management is also working on a R6.3-billion MyCiti upgrade that will link Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha to Wynberg and Claremont, and there are several other construction projects underway across the south-east metro with new red roads, bridges and other infrastructure to accommodate the bus service.

It has also been experimenting with innovative new infrastructure projects such as reversible roads and sky circles in an effort to solve the city’s traffic woes.

The other area of focus concerns the city’s railroads, as the City of Cape Town wants to take over the management of the area’s passenger rail network and scale up its viability with new trains, new routes, and upgrades to existing stations.

However, the network is currently managed by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, and national government has been dragging its feet with regards to the devolution of the nation’s railways.

Cape Town is working to have a detailed business plan in place for the takeover of its Metrorail service by mid-2025, which it estimates could save R932 million a year for lower-income households.

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