The Global Commuter Pain Index

Relax, Australia's commuter woes are apparently not the nastiest in the world - even though you may beg to differ if you were travelling on the M4 (Sydney) or Monash (Melbourne) freeways on your way to work this morning.

Multinational technology and IT behemoth IBM has just completed its first-ever Global Commuter Pain Index, surveying 8192 drivers in 20 cities on six continents, gaining feedback on issues such as commuting time, anger caused by driving in traffic, the amount of time stuck in traffic, and the price of fuel.

It doesn't appear that motorcycle riders have been included in the survey, but we'll still push on for the curiosity factor alone.

IBM compiled the results of the survey on a scale of one to 100, with the higher the number the worse it gets.

Of the 20 cities surveyed, Beijing and Mexico City have the dubious honour of being the worst with Bradman-like scores of 99, ahead of Johannesburg (97), Moscow (84) and New Delhi (81).

The only Aussie entrant, Melbourne, was equal second with Houston on 17, with only Stockholm (15) doing better. Sydney wasn't included in the survey, and it's IBM's Australian base, too.

The full results are as follows:

Beijing: 99, Mexico City: 99, Johannesburg: 97, Moscow: 84, New Delhi: 81, Sao Paolo: 75, Milan: 52, Buenos Aires: 50, Madrid: 48, London: 36, Paris: 36, Toronto: 32, Amsterdam: 25, Los Angeles: 25, Berlin: 24, Montreal: 23, New York: 19, Houston: 17, Melbourne: 17, Stockholm: 15.

According to Gizmag, the number of new cars in Beijing rose by 23.8 per cent in the first four months of 2010. Beijing plans on investing around $70b by 2015 to improve its traffic infrastructure.

The problem for places like Beijing is that traffic infrastructure hasn't been able to keep up with the increased amount of vehicles on the road.

But even that may not be the answer.

"Traditional solutions - building more roads - will not be enough to overcome the growth of traffic in these rapidly developing cities, so multiple solutions need to be deployed simultaneously to avoid a failure of the transportation networks," said Naveen Lamba, IBM's global industry lead for intelligent transportation. "New techniques are required that empower transportation officials to better understand and proactively manage the flow of traffic."

Other findings of the survey included the facts that 49 per cent of global drivers thought traffic has gotten worse in the past three years, 87 per cent have been stuck in traffic causing an average one-hour delay, and 31 per cent have encountered traffic so heavy that they turned around and went home.