Cape Town's SA's most congested capital

Cape Town holds the unimpressive record as being South Africa's most congested city with road users taking 27% longer to reach their destinations. Image: Life is Savage

Navigation company TomTom released its annual global traffic index report for 2013 saying it had found that Cape Town had overtaken Johannesburg as the most congested city in the country and was the 33rd-most congested in the world.

Cape Town has a 27% congestion level. This means that, at any given time, a Cape Town motorist needs to add 27% to the free-flowing travel time to get a realistic estimated time of arrival.

The figure for Johannesburg is 25%.

Cape Town traffic department spokesman Richard Coleman said the most congested route during peak hour was the N1 into the city centre. Motorists often sit from 6.15am to 9.30am edging their way into town.

The report said that South Africans spend an average of 10 working days a year stuck in traffic.

Lynne Pretorius, Director of ITS Engineers, a company specialising in transport planning, said South Africa was still dealing with "apartheid-style town planning", with residents living far from their workplace.

"In the past public transport was [adequate] and car ownership wasn't high," she said, adding that the situation in South Africa was in stark contrast to that other countries.

"The era of the car is over. All major cities across the world have invested heavily in public transport," Pretorius said.

Town Planner Martin Scott said widening roads would not solve the problem and public transport systems need to be used such as the MyCiti bus service in Cape Town that connects suburbs to the city centre.

Source: The Times via I-net Bridge