Bucharest, among the cities with the worst road traffic. Drivers at the limit of patience: “It's a full-fledged jungle”

The capital of Romania remains among the most congested cities in the world in terms of time lost by drivers in traffic. Despite the changes brought by the A0 Beltway, many Bucharesters say they have run out of patience.

Traffic in Bucharest. Photo: Eugen Vișan. Pixabay.com

Three-quarters of the A0 – Capital Beltway, with a total length of 101 kilometers, have been completed, and approximately 25 kilometers are to be opened to traffic in 2026, according to the authorities' estimates. However, the new high-speed road did not solve the problem of traffic congestion in Bucharest.

The southern ring of the A0 Motorway was built and inaugurated in 2024–2025, while the northern ring is partially completed. On this sector, there are still three segments in the works, which add up to approximately 25 kilometers and are expected to be put into use in 2026: Lot 4 (DN3 Cernica – A2), with a length of 4.47 kilometers; Lot 3 (partial), Afumați – Cernica, of 6.30 kilometers; and Lot 1 (DJ601 – DN1 Corbeanca), of 17.50 kilometers.

Bucharest, among the cities with slow traffic

Bucharest has remained, in recent years, one of the cities with the busiest boulevards in the world. The 2025 edition of the TomTom Traffic Index, a global annual report produced by the TomTom company, shows that, in 2024, the Romanian capital was among the most congested cities in the world.

The report measures the average time needed to travel 10 kilometers in a defined urban area (minutes:seconds), an indicator that allows intuitive comparisons, as it expresses congestion in the unit directly felt by the population and the business environment: minutes lost in daily commutes.

In the top 100 cities in the world where the traffic is the slowest, Bucharest occupies the 11th place, with a time of 32 minutes and 28 seconds needed by drivers to travel ten kilometers in 2024.

In first place in this list is the Colombian city of Barranquilla, where drivers cover ten kilometers in 36 minutes and 6 seconds. The second city in the global ranking is Calcutta, from India, and among European cities, the Romanian capital is outranked only by London and Dublin.

The study also reports the time lost by drivers over a year in traffic, assessing the duration of peak hours, the intensity of the commute and the frequency with which congestion extends beyond the classic peak intervals. In this ranking, which includes 50 cities, Bucharest is in fourth place, with a duration of 150 hours lost annually by drivers in traffic. In the first three places are Lima (Peru), with 155 hours lost annually, Dublin (Ireland) and Mexico City (Mexico).

In a time-based ranking, a city's position is best understood as a summary of how efficiently its street network turns demand into movement, the TomTom Traffic Index shows.

“When the average travel time for 10 kilometers increases, the burden is not evenly distributed: it is concentrated on commuters with fixed schedules, time-sensitive services and freight limited to certain time slots. Therefore, congestion is often correlated with broader economic frictions — higher costs per delivery, higher safety margins in scheduling and reduced predictability of service response times.” concludes the report, presented by Statranker.org on December 16, 2025.

Drivers' problems in Bucharest traffic

Traffic congestion is one of the most complained about problems in the Capital. The topic has sparked heated debate recently, after drivers were invited on the Reddit platform to talk about how they are affected by traffic jams and which areas are less congested.

“Traffic isn't bad. It's at the level where you hate your life.” commented, sarcastically, a netizen.

Someone else says that one of the topics discussed in the family is leaving the Capital because of the traffic.

“Not only is it insanely crowded, but a lot of people are rude and aggressive. Full jungle”he says.

Another local claims that public transport by bus and trolleybus is equally difficult.

“The only lucky ones are those who can only travel by tram or metro; otherwise, it's horrible”he adds.

Some Bucharest residents say that they have gotten used to using the car not only out of necessity, but also because it offers them privacy, freedom and comfort.

“We go by car because we like it. It's convenient for us, sometimes it's faster. You don't struggle through buses or stations with your child behind you, you don't sit on a bus full of unwashed people (as unwashed as the bus itself). You don't sit around looking for seats, the tram no longer throws you from one side to the other, you no longer sit crammed into a can with 40 others, you no longer sit carefully luggage, don't stay in that anymoresummer heat,” says one of them.

Some Bucharest residents recommend that those who want to move to Bucharest look for housing located near metro stations.

“Now, during the holidays, there is no traffic. Otherwise, it matters enormously from where to where and the time. You have a good chance of turning around even 20 minutes after a parking space. The subway is sacred most of the time. Between 7-10 and 16-19 the traffic is more congested, in any case. I would also add the interval 12-14, when parents go to pick up their children by car in front of the school”writes another Bucharest resident.

A driver claims to have traveled 400 meters in 40 minutes.

“If you want to get to work at 8:00am and go back at 5:00pm, then the traffic is terrible no matter what mode of transport you use”, adds another.

Some complain about the way many drivers drive in Bucharest.

“You have to be prepared to meet people for whom the rules of the road are something they may have heard of in the past but are currently arguing with”says another local.

A Romanian tells that, in certain areas, it seems impossible for him to travel by car, especially in those areas where public transport is lacking.

“Most of the roads of the people I know in Bucharest traffic look like this: it takes 20-30 minutes to get out of the neighborhood or their street (10-20 percent of the road, that's about two kilometers), and the remaining 80 percent they cover quickly, in another 20-30 minutes, on main boulevards. So the place where you start is very important”someone else adds.

During school holidays and holidays, the traffic is more bearable, says another driver.

“Traffic is no worse in Bucharest than in any other populated city. Timișoara, Iași or Cluj are the same, depending on the time and direction. The only difference is that Bucharest is more spread out“, someone else thinks.

Pollution, related to road traffic

The pollution index measured in several areas of the Capital has shown, in recent days, lower values, and some locals attributed this fact to the reduction of road traffic, during the days off and holiday vacations.

“Suddenly, the air quality in Bucharest is decent since road traffic has drastically decreased in intensity, like any other holiday season. Am I wrong when I say that road traffic is what we should be worried about?”, observed a local.

His question gave rise to heated debates on the real cause of pollution in the Capital. Other Bucharesters believe that the pollution is mainly caused by the burning of waste and tires, not by cars, which are also at a lower level during this period or feel less because of the weather conditions.

“The main source of air pollution in Bucharest is the burning of waste and tires in incredibly large quantities, burning which slows down enormously during the holidays and whose smoke passes much faster and is felt less when it rains, snows or the wind blows (as is happening now)”claims one commentator.

“Or the furnaces in Ilfov stopped… they had Christmas off. The boys don't burn garbage anymore during this period”, another local commented ironically.

Traffic remains the main factor of air pollution in Bucharest, claims another Romanian, showing that pollution indices have decreased during this period also in other usually congested areas, in cities such as Timișoara or Brașov.

“If the fires around the Capital are the main source of pollution, the air in the center should be much cleaner than the air on the outskirts, which is not really the case most of the time”says someone else.

Another Bucharest resident believes that the burning of waste and tires, fires from landfills, thermal power plants and homes heated with various materials, followed by traffic, are the main polluters of some areas of the Capital.

“Until we get to the cars, we still have a long way to go. I live in Popești-Leordeni and it would sometimes surprise you what smells are around here in the evening. The traffic is a perfume by comparison”he says.

Someone else claims a similar situation in the Homeland Defense area.

“Car exhaust doesn't smell like ebony and leached. At 3 in the morning when there's nothing going around, you can cut the smoke with a knife”he adds.