JOHANNESBURG - Inhabitants of Johannesburg and Cape Town may be surprised to know their cities are not the world’s most congested, or even in the top 50 most congested globally.
According to the Inrix 2018 Global Traffic Scorecard, Johannesburg comes in at 61 out of 200 cities surveyed, and Cape Town 95th. Capetonians lose on average 162 hours to congestion per year compared to Johannesburg’s 119, however, which will likely not surprise them at all.
Anyone who’s ever lost even an hour to traffic knows it’s not just frustrating, it’s detrimental to many areas of our lives including our stress levels, productivity and health (due to air pollution). Fortunately, there are tools available to road users that can help manage our journeys and make life a little easier.
Live the traffic
Apps like Google Maps, Waze and others feature live traffic updates, which empower you to decide whether to head out, stay in and work until the chaos has subsided. or find something else to do for an hour or two (like getting a head start on your grocery shop for the next week) before tackling your commute.
Miss/ter Popularity
Your navigation app can also help you work out when to hit the gym, or the shops, when it’s not peak time so that you’re not passing up time on the road and heading into time in queues for the showers. In Maps this is accessible if you click on a location’s listing in the app and scroll down to ‘Popular Times’.
Sharing is caring
If someone is waiting for you, with tapping foot (or hungry face), share your progress with them in real time as you make your way through the gridlock. Both Google Maps and Waze have this feature and you can share real time information via Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or even email.
Making the time up
All the planning in the world can’t get around the fact that school and work tends to start at the same time for everyone and you’re going to be sitting in traffic, staring at the bumper of the car in front of you, at least for some days of the week. So why not make use of the time? If you’ve got kids in the car, even more reason to have fun time rather than whine time.
Get Google to tell you bad Dad jokes by using the voice search option in Search and the Google App. All you have to do is click the microphone icon and say, ‘Ok Google, tell me a joke’ (don’t say we didn’t warn you!).
Or make use of apps like Audible to catch up on your reading (family-friendly or not, up to you?). Give the kids something to giggle at by turning on their favourite YouTube channel, or take turns using Lens to identify the things you’re passing that the kids don’t recognise (but not if you’re the driver!).
Traffic is likely to be a reality for many of us for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try and make the best of it.