Daily Deadlock

Some time ago it rained a bit. When leaving work I had the option to take a taxi, and I did. I will not make the same mistake another time in a rainy day...

To explain, this is Rio:

In this area there are around 15 million people. And every day, we all need to go to work.

Now, we have two main areas, the rich zones in the south(inside the red areas) and the poor zones in the north:

The poor zones tend to start working earlier,  and they basically go to work to provide services in the rich zones:

The rich zones work concentrates in the centre,  where there is a lot of offices. The centre is considered to be only this:

Now, the thing about Rio is that, do you see these green marked areas? Those are mountains.

And I mean mountains. The green right area's highest point is 700m. In the coast there are 350m and 500m mountains. Basically they sprout from the ground and get high fast, giving Rio this peculiar look:

So, if you check the map again, you'll notice that most central and rich areas are actually surrounded by mountains. As in completely surrounded. No chance in hell to make a superhighway connecting them.

So, we get tunnels or "valleys" of two lanes in each direction. Mostly in these points:

Of course, we cannot forget people coming from other cities to work, which have these entry points too:

Now, check what's the subway line available to help move all these people around these very closed areas with very specific and sparse entry points:

(this is an approximation of the subway, but you get the idea)

So basically most people need to take cars or buses. Of course the rich areas use cars, but the poor areas also have plenty of those.

This results in a daily clusterfuck of epic proportions. People in the south zone may take up to two hours to reach the centre, and 2 more to get back. If you do this in the middle of the night the route takes 20 minutes.

When it rains especially, seeing as how people clearly dissolve under the rain, people that maybe would walk a bit and take buses or metro in a clear day takes car or taxi.

The average time to go from the south rich area in the centre and the actual business centre is 2 hours during rush hour. Outside rush hour it's actually 20 minutes. And when it rains, you just better forget to take the car becasue then moving just from the business centre towards Zona Sul, where Copacabana is, can take already more than one hour....