Vancouver named Canada's most traffic-congested city

Vancouver, the third largest city in Canada, has been named Canada's worst city for traffic congestion and the third worst city for commuters in North America, only next to Mexico's Mexico City and the U.S. Los Angeles, said a report on Tuesday.

The overall congestion rate in Vancouver is 35 percent, up about 7 percent year-on-year, mainly due to Vancouver's high number of bottlenecked bridges and large suburban commuting population, said the Traffic Index report released by America's GPS-maker TomTom.

A commuter spent 84 hours a year stuck in traffic on average, which makes Vancouver the worst city in Canada for traffic jam, according to the report.

To curb traffic congestion, Vancouver's civic government has launched a mail-in plebiscite to choose whether or not to increase the regional sales tax by half a percent. The government and supporters of the tax want to channel an additional 7.5 billion CAD (5.9 billion U.S. dollars) into transit infrastructure and services.

However, quite some Vancouverites do not agree with the TomTom traffic report. Vancouver's traffic is not as bad as Southern California, Boston or downtown Toronto and the report showing Vancouver Canada's worst traffic is apparently wrong, a local driver said. Endi