Moscow Wins IBM Commuter Pain Poll With `Whopping' 3-Hour Jams
A Russian traffic policeman works in a street with a huge traffic jam in Moscow. Photographer: Viktor Drachev/AFP/Getty Images
Moscow drivers suffer the longest traffic jams of major cities, making for a “grueling” atmosphere that inhibits commerce, International Business Machines Corp. said.
The average Muscovite motorist spent a “whopping” 2 1/2 hours stuck in traffic at least once in the last three years, IBM said in its first global study on the “emotional and economic toll of commuting,” which was e-mailed today.
More than 40 percent of drivers in the Russian capital reported jams exceeding 3 hours, or three times the average for the 20 cities in the Commuter Pain report.
“The daily commute in some of the world’s most economically important international cities is longer and more grueling than before imagined, reflecting the failure of transportation infrastructure to keep pace with economic activity,” Armonk, New York-based IBM said.
Traffic has become so clogged in parts of Moscow that Sheremetyevo Airport, the hub of flagship carrier OAO Aeroflot, issued a public plea for help yesterday, saying that hundreds of passengers and pilots have missed flights this week. Aeroflot is losing 400,000 euros ($495,440) a day because of the “transport collapse,” Interfax reported, citing Deputy Chief Executive Officer Andrei Kalmykov.
‘People Are Complaining’
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin addressed the issue on state television today, asking Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov to work with municipal authorities to expedite road repairs that have quintupled the average time it takes to reach the airport from the city center to as much as five hours.
“People are complaining, you can’t reach Sheremetyevo,” Putin told Ivanov on Rossiya 24. Russia’s Transportation Ministry estimates that traffic delays in and around Moscow cost the economy 400 billion rubles ($12.8 billion) a year, or 6 percent of gross product. The city needs to add 400 kilometers of roads to ease the 650 traffic jams that occur on average every day, according to the ministry.
Public spending on transportation in Russia will fall to 1.9 percent of gross domestic product this year from the “already low level of” 2.5 percent in 2009, the World Bank said in a report published on June 16. The quality of the country’s road infrastructure is ranked 111th in the world, according to the Washington-based bank.
Beijing, New York
Half of the 8,192 motorists on five continents surveyed by IBM said gridlock has worsened in the last three years. Beijing and New Delhi showed the most improvement, while Johannesburg, Moscow and Toronto showed the least. Beijing and Moscow led the world with the most road trips canceled due to anticipated traffic jams.
Beijing won the title of most “onerous” commute overall, when factors such as traffic predictability, gasoline prices and emotional stress are included. Mexico City was second worst, followed by Johannesburg, Moscow and New Delhi. Stockholm, Melbourne and Houston have the “least painful commutes.”
More than half of the motorists polled, or 57 percent, said traffic stress has harmed their health, led by Mexico City and Sao Paolo, while drivers in Beijing and Moscow reported being the angriest.
New Yorkers reported less anxiety than drivers from any other city, with just 34 percent feeling “traffic stress” on a regular basis, followed by Houston, Melbourne and Toronto. “These are all cities with well-developed transportation systems,” IBM said in the report.
The global poll, conducted in April and May, has an overall margin of error of 2 percentage points. It follows similar surveys carried out in the U.S. in 2008 and 2009, IBM said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Abelsky in Moscow at pabelsky@bloomberg.net.
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