Lagos Ranked World’s Worst City With Road Traffic Congestion

TrafficIndex has ranked Lagos State as the number one city in the world with the worst road traffic.

TrafficIndex disclosed this in its 2023 annual report of Traffic Congestion Ranking, released recently.

Lagos was ranked number one with an average Traffic Congestion Index (TCI) of 56.39.

The Nigerian commercial nerve centre is followed by Riga, the capital of Latvia, while Tehran (Iran), Mexico City (Mexico), Mumbai (India), Krakow (Poland), Istanbul (Turkey), Lima (Peru), Cairo (Egypt) and Bucuresti (Romania) were ranked third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth, respectively.

The report contains only cities having at least 500,000 inhabitants.

Recall that the Danne Institute for Research, a not-for-profit trust, recently unveiled a report titled, ‘Behavioural Causes of Traffic Congestion in Lagos’.

The report estimates that traffic congestion costs Lagos approximately N4 trillion yearly.

“This staggering figure underscores the urgent need for effective solutions to enhance connectivity and productivity in the megacity,” the institute stated.

Speaking last Wednesday at the presentation of the report, which was funded by the Bank of Industry and Africa Finance Corporation, Executive Director of Danne Institute for Research, Franca Ovadje, emphasized on the need for improved connectivity in Lagos, adding that it would increase productivity.

She said: “Interestingly, 35 percent of our respondents said their number one challenge in living and working in Lagos is the traffic congestion. We also found that the top three main causes of traffic congestion in Lagos are behavioural. These include bad road infrastructure, disregard for traffic laws, activities of agberos at the bus stops, and buses picking passengers.

“We also asked the respondents the three things they would do if they were Governor of Lagos State to solve the traffic problem, they said they would construct, repair and maintain roads; ban agberos from the road and enforce traffic laws.”

Due to traffic gridlock caused by indiscriminate parking, among others, most Lagos residents spend signing amount of their time in traffic daily.