You’ve won at something, Metro Manila, but congratulations are not in order: Last year, the country’s capital had the worst traffic congestion among 387 metro areas in the world, based on the 2023 TomTom Traffic Index.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” you might be saying from where you’re currently sat in traffic (not behind the wheel, we hope—just a reminder that ADDA is real). Okay, allow us to give you several stats to provide some truly depressing context.
Metro Manila’s ranking rose by one last year versus in 2022, beating Colombia’s Bogota, which now drops to fifth place. A ‘metro area,’ as defined by TomTom, is “a circle covering the city and rural areas in close proximity.”
PHOTO BY LEANDRE GRECIA
On average, it took...