Jakarta has won the dubious honour of having the world's worst traffic.......an index from Castrol ranking Southeast Asia's largest capital top among 78 cities for traffic stops and starts.

Twenty-seven million people live in Jakarta and its surrounding areas, more than a million of them cramming into buses, trains, motorcycles and cars to get into work every day.

The city is trying to tackle the problem with a mass rapid transit system, or subway... ...and is also planning a traffic quota based on license plates, and considering road tolls.

Commuters fed up with the crunch are car pooling or trying out a different route altogether -- between the lines of traffic.

A resident, Budi Edi Prayitno, said: 

"Before I started cycling to work I used a motorcycle, but using motorcycle is much slower than cycling because almost every street in Jakarta is congested, so I thought I need to commute to work in a different way, in that case I won't stress myself too much during the trip."

The government's end game is to cut traffic by up to 30 per cent - and it's confident it can do that by 2025.

But Indonesia's rising middle class love their wheels.

The nation recently pulled ahead of Thailand to become Southeast Asia's biggest auto market.......meaning there's a challenge ahead for authorities desperate to make things a little less crowded in the world's bad traffic capital.

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