Commuters travel nearly 6 hours a day in China's most congested city

East China’s Jinan remains the most traffic-congested city in the country in 2017 after overtaking Beijing for two consecutive years, according to a report.

The report, shedding light on which cities have the most road congestion, was released by AutoNavi Software Co, a mobile mapping and navigation service, and Alibaba’s global cloud computing system service.

Commuters in Jinan, capital of Shandong Province, experience the worst traffic jams in China. Commuters sit for 5.7 hours in traffic per day on average, which would rack up a total of 2078 hours per year. The average speed is 21.12 km/h during peak periods, followed by Beijing with 22.17 km/h, who tops the list as the most congested megacity.

According to the report, The overall traffic situation in China has improved last year, which saw a 2.45% decline in Traffic Performance Index (TPI) when compared with that of 2016, even as GDP and car ownership keep increasing.

It is proved that the traffic situation in 2017 have improved in more than 78 percent of main cities, marking the significant effects of the government on tackling gridlock thanks to a series of traffic measures, such as flow decentralization and policies that keep cars off the road on certain days based on their license plate numbers.

It is noted that cities in southwestern China have the biggest gridlock in rush hours amid mountainous landscapes, followed by the northeast.

Shanghai scored the 8th spot and Shenzhen 37th.

Hangzhou, the headquarters of world-known e-commerce platform Alibaba, has slipped out of the top 10 list. Suqian, the hometown of its opponent JD.com, has the second highest jump in traffic congestion.

The report also notes that the best hours for commuting turn out to be from 10 am till noon every day, and the last quarter of the year has the worst traffic.