Fifth-worst city for traffic pains

Everything we've experienced about the traffic situation in Johannesburg has been confirmed.

According to the International Business Machines Corporation's Global Commuter Pain Index, Johannesburg is the fifth-worst city in the world for the amount of pain commuters suffer getting to and from work. It's even worse than commuter madhouses like New Delhi in India, which I can attest to as a wild traffic experience.

South African commuters have struggled with limited transport options for decades.

We have waited endlessly for errant buses, complied with long-winded taxi routes, witnessed and felt road rage and even set aside whole days for getting something done. It is appalling that so many productive hours are squandered on battling traffic.

Will the situation get better or worse?

For how long will we put up with it? Perhaps until we cross the pain threshold and retreat, frazzled, to some off-the-grid Limpopo hideout.

Johannesburg is, even more so than the dispersed cities of the US , designed around the car.

Sarah Britten has written about it: "In the hierarchy of those things we value, cars outrank almost everything else."

She is right. We declare our status and judge one another by our cars.

That means our cities are planned around this emissions-intensive and climate-unfriendly mode of transport.

Our cities are also highly dispersed because of the design of the townships .

Apart from the appalling human cost of denying people access to the opportunities of city life, these settlements have resulted in massive commuter distances.

An inclusive and cohesive public transport system is one of our greatest challenges, and makes our cities more carbon-intensive.

The IBM study also shows that 41% of people surveyed in 20 cities across the globe believe decent public transport is the answer to traffic problems.

In Johannesburg there has been a significant shift towards using public transport this year.

The introduction of the Rea Vaya buses and the Gautrain are starting to revolutionise the way we view the city.

Remember the fracas around the Gautrain at the time? Well, here's to the visionaries who saw it through.

We need more projects like this to reconnect our communities through efficient public transport, and make our cities more climate-friendly.