据《9News》报道，悉尼已经成为澳洲最拥挤的城市，每名司机每年花在路上的时间多达四个星期。

Tom Tom公司发布的交通指数报告显示，澳洲正在赶超世界平均交通拥挤水平，自2008年起道路上的汽车数量已增长了35%，而全球平均增长水平是23%。

报告指出，悉尼的交通情况比巴黎、纽约和柏林还差，高峰时段司机平均要在路上多花41分钟。

在悉尼东部，自2008年以来交通拥堵情况增长了39%。墨尔本、卧龙岗和黄金海岸的交通拥堵情况自去年以来增长了4%，珀斯的交通阻塞自2014年以来一直持平。

Hobart 2008年以来的交通流量增长了32%，布里斯班28%，阿德莱德27%。

Tom Tom亚太地区销售副总裁Phil Allen表示，今年的报告明显在提醒澳洲人高峰时段该考虑其他交通方式了。

Sydney is congestion capital of

Australasia – and even New York’s

road network is faster

Sydney has the unenviable title of Australasia’s most congested city after a report from a peak transport body revealed it features seven of the 10 slowest roads on both sides of the Tasman.

And in a sign of the mounting pressures of a booming population, average speeds of 72.5 kilometres an hour on Sydney’s road network – which includes motorways such as the M7 and M2 – are even slower than New York.

The Austroads report shows Sydney is worse than Melbourne on most measures of congestion, including the extent to which motorists are delayed and need to allow for extra time to reach their destinations at peak periods.

And when compared with international peers in the United States, the average speed on the Sydney road network is slower than San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia – which range from 79 to 86km/h – and only slightly faster than Seattle’s.

Although not deemed a peer, New York’s average speed of 76.6km/h is faster, which the report said could be due to its orbital freeway.

With Sydney and Melbourne both facing worsening congestion, the report said Australasian cities could learn from Boston planners who had allowed vehicles to bypass the city with ease despite its coastal location.

“There are a series of ‘half’ concentric circles that run around the perimeter of the city, as well as roads with fast speed limits that run through the centre,” the report said.

While Adelaide’s King William Street holds the title of Australasia’s slowest thoroughfare, Harris Street in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Pyrmont ranked second as motorists crawled along at an average of just 14.5 kilometres an hour.

Cleveland Street in the inner city between Darlington and Moore Park is the fifth slowest at 17.1 km/h, followed by South Dowling at Moore Park, Stacey Street at Bankstown, and Military and Lane Cove roads on the north shore.

Church Street at Parramatta took the title of the 10th slowest.

Sydney motorists can take some solace from the fact that the Hume Highway ranked as the third fastest road in Australasia with an average speed of almost 98km/h.

The Austroads report also showed that Sydney has seven of Australasia’s 10 most delayed roads. While Melbourne’s Burke Road earned the title for most traffic delays, Centenary Drive at Homebush in Sydney’s west was second worst.

The other Sydney roads to feature in the top 10 were Lane Cove Road, Epping Road, Homebush Bay Drive, the Eastern Distributor and Cahill Expressway.

The Baird government has described as a congestion buster the $16.9 billion WestConnex motorway project, which will be opened in stages over the next six years.

However, critics such as the City of Sydney fear the new toll road will funnel more traffic on to suburban streets and into the central business district.

Geoffrey Clifton, a lecturer in transport at Sydney University’s Business School, said WestConnex and other road-building projects would help but would not be enough to cope with a predicted extra 1 million people in Sydney over the next decade.

“I don’t see congestion getting better at in the longer term – I only see it getting worse,” he said. “We are going to see more congestion at non-traditional times such as the middle of the day and at weekends.”

Dr Clifton said Australia would eventually need to confront the controversial issue of road pricing to “better ration use of roads”.

Austroads’ Congestion and Reliability Review was based on an analysis of two months of Google Maps data in late 2015 for 600 kilometres of roads in each major city.

It showed Sydney was broadly in line with its international peers on other measures such as travel-time delays and reliability during the morning and afternoon peak periods.

Sydney also had the highest proportion of journeys made to work by public transport, cycling or walking of Australasia’s major cities, at 26 per cent.

New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, was second at 23 per cent, and Melbourne third at 19 per cent.