Why do countries with low vehicle ownership rates still have bad traffic?

Question

Colombia has 111 cars per 1000 people and Bogotá has some of the worst traffic in the world and traffic is terrible in a lot of the country’s cities. But the United States has 806 vehicles per 1000 people, and yeah there’s traffic, but it isn’t eight times worse than Colombia. Where does traffic come from in low vehicle ownership countries?

[Source](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Vehicles-Per-1000-People_02162024.jpeg)

In: Other

Answer 1

the raw number of cars by itself is irrelevant. you have to compare it to the road infrastructure. a country could have only a thousand cars, but if the road network has the capacity of a McDonald’s drive thru, traffic is going to suck