Traffic jams make many motorists angry in India, but it has been discovered that residents of different cities respond differently to rush hour frustrations. In IBM’s (News - Alert) latest Social Sentiment Index, a study considered the impact of traffic on India’s largest cities: Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai, with IBM finding that motor vehicle accidents and weather led to worst traffic tie-ups some 75 percent of the time in the three cities in India, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Also, Mumbai motorists say that stress around traffic is about half as much as those from Bangalore and New Delhi. New Delhi motorists were also five to seven times more negative about rush hour traffic than those in Bangalore and Mumbai, IBM said. IBM’s data was based on 168,330 online discussions on Twitter, Facebook (News - Alert) and other social media during September.

Also, New Delhi commuters are having more stress from rush hour traffic (50 percent) than their counterparts in Mumbai (29 percent) or Bangalore (34 percent).

The Hindustan Times said this is the case despite wide roads and the Metro – or the fact that New Delhi has seen improvement in roads and better public transport.

Such information could help these three cities and others to plan for needed investments in transportation infrastructure and consider its potential impact, according to a statement from IBM. It could also be used for campaigns to move commuters to different modes of transportation, IBM adds.

“Like all rapidly growing cities across the world, there are infrastructure growing pains in many Indian cities,” Guru Banavar, vice president and chief technology officer, Smarter Cities, IBM, said in the statement carried by TMCnet. “However, when city officials can factor public sentiment – positive, negative or otherwise – around city services like transportation, they can more quickly pinpoint and prioritize areas that are top of mind for their citizens. This could mean more targeted investment, improving a particular city service, more effective communication about a service that is offered, and even surfacing best practices and successful efforts that could be applied to other zones of a city.” 

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