Russia's Epic 3-Day Traffic Jam Was Nothing Compared to the World's Worst Gridlock

Thousands of Muscovites just endured a brutal three-day traffic jam. The snow came down on the Russian capital, and some short-sighted local municipalities decided to close off their highway exits along a major stretch between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Ten thousand drivers were trapped in a standstill that stretched nearly 100 miles.

The New York Times reported that Russian state TV “broadcast images of weekend travelers huddled for warmth in idling cars, and after order seemed to break down among drivers left to fend for themselves in the subfreezing temperatures.”

Of course, civil society promptly eroded—drivers that weren’t huddling in their idling cars to stave off below-freezing temps went out on foot for supplies, only to find sky-high prices for food and smokes.

“Roadside cafes gouged those wanting sausages and loaves of bread, and the price of cigarettes was reported to have shot up tenfold,” according to the Times. Arguments broke out. Emergency aid providers failed to deliver supplies. In other words, folks switched into post-apocalyptic survival mode right quick. This 72-hour traffic snafu in Russia was notable enough to make headlines around the world. And sure, it was epic. But it was far from the first multi-day bout of gridlock, and far from the worst. It's also something of a harbinger of jams to come, given the trends of global auto production. And most of them are gettomg sold in fast-developing, already congested megopolises like Moscow, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and Beijing. In fact, just last year, analysts determined that the world passed the 1 billion car mark, and vehicle registrations were still climbing fast.

Brazil, for instance, added 2.5 million vehicles to its fleet in 2010 alone. No wonder then that Sao Paulo, the biggest city in South America, boasts the world’s most routinely massive traffic jams— an average jam sprawls out for 112 miles. On Fridays, that can spike to 183. Commuters are used to spending four hours a day in transit to travel just a fraction of that distance. If you're on the bus, you're literally moving slower than the folks walking on the sidewalk out your window for much of your ride.

Mexico City, meanwhile, routinely tops IBM’s Global Commuter Pain Index.

But the worst traffic jam in history is widely believed to be the one that ground Beijing’s roadways to a halt in 2010. An unexpected influx of trucks carrying construction equipment and coal deliveries, combined with a burgeoning base of commuters, resulted in a face-melting, steering wheel-pounding, rage-fest that lasted 12 days and spanned 60 miles. And how big is that 'burgeoning base of commuters', you might ask? Well, between 2009 and 2010, "Total vehicles in operation in the country climbed by more than 16.8 million units, to slightly more than 78 million, accounting for nearly half the year’s global increase," according to a report from Ward's Auto.

All those cars helped create this, a less reported-on traffic disaster involving primarily delivery trucks. It may not be the "worst," but it is probably the world's longest. This one kept some 5,000 truck drivers locked in place for an entire month.

Unsurprisingly, each of these cities—Moscow, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and Beijing—have a number of commonalities. In each, the car remains a status symbol (as it does around most of the world) and a striven-for alternative to mass transit, which, in each case, is seriously lacking. Growing populations, car-centric transit systems, and a dearth of public transportation options is a fine recipe for hideously congested roadways. Which sucks, because there a few worse places for a human to be than trapped in an unmoving vehicle. Nothing pisses us off more than an unexpected bout of bumper-to-bumper. It’s maddening, we're cut off from everything in our little steel box, and there’s no appropriate ventilation system handy.  But this is the way most of the world has chosen to move. The inertia of a half century-old transportation model begot by an era of American highway-and-suburb-building is dragging the world along to this day. That world still wants cars, and we’re going to see more epic multi-day traffic jams as it gets them.