"All this horsepower, and no room to gallop?" Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty delivered that line over two decades ago. What was meant as a joke so many years ago, feels more like a traffic advisory for many Indian cities, including Delhi-NCR. We have been reading several horror stories from people in Bengaluru, like Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, who revealed in an X post that a 31-kilometre journey took nearly two-and-a-half hours, another Google techie said his four-kilometre journey to the office took 45 minutes. Frustrating, right?
You buy a 250-horsepower SUV. But the only thing it outruns is your patience.
Delhi-NCR boasts some of India's widest roads, signature expressways and gleaming flyovers. Yet every morning and evening, these engineering marvels transform into open-air parking lots. The average commute has become an endurance sport where your right foot performs thousands of micro-workouts on the brake pedal while your hands develop a permanent relationship with the horn.
The nightmare runs seven days a week. During one weekend drive, I had enough time to discuss the E20 debate with my wife, take my kids through Goku's entire transformation timeline - from Dragon Ball Z to GT - and wonder if we'd reach home before he unlocked another form.
Perhaps it's time for automobile advertisements to evolve.
The automakers should forget 0-100 kmph timings. What they need to tell us instead is how many times the brakes can survive bumper-to-bumper traffic before giving up. Have taglines such as "Emergency Braking Life: 1.5 lakh kilometres in Delhi traffic". That sounds far more relevant than acceleration figures nobody gets to experience outside YouTube reviews.
And mileage? Let's not even go there.
Fuel efficiency assumes the vehicle is actually moving. Most of us are simply converting expensive petrol into cabin air-conditioning while admiring the same divider for 20 minutes.
Hybrid cars were supposed to be the future. Electric vehicles promised silent, clean mobility. Luxury sedans came with adaptive cruise control. Unfortunately, nobody told them they'd spend most of their lives adapting to stationary traffic.
The Economic Survey 2025-26 highlighted that traffic congestion costs Indian cities Rs 1.47 lakh crore per year due to lost productivity, wasted fuel and higher logistics costs. Add to that rising emissions, deteriorating air quality, stressed commuters and declining mental health, and traffic is no longer just an inconvenience - it's an economic and public health challenge.
Ironically, we spend weeks comparing engine specifications before buying a car that eventually spends more time standing still than running.
Which brings us to an uncomfortable question: Is buying a car slowly becoming one of the worst financial decisions for people living in large cities?
Cars are already depreciating assets. The moment they leave the showroom, they start losing value. Insurance premiums rise. Maintenance bills arrive. Fuel prices fluctuate.
It has another cost that is usually ignored: The opportunity cost of your life.
Due to congestion on roads, hours are lost every week, many people have vented their frustration online about missing family dinners, meetings have been delayed leading to accumulation of stress.
The irony is striking. Buying a new vehicle takes less than a day. Financing gets approved in minutes. Registration happens quickly. Deliveries are celebrated with flowers, ribbons and social media posts.
But building a road takes years. Land acquisition, environmental clearances, utility shifting, tendering, construction, redesign, litigation, monsoon delays - and by the time the road is finally inaugurated, traffic has already outgrown it.
Contrast this with cities like Singapore.
Owning a car there is deliberately expensive. The goal isn't to punish drivers but to prevent roads from reaching breaking point. High ownership costs are balanced with efficient public transport that is reliable enough for people to happily leave their cars at home.
Tokyo offers another lesson. Despite being one of the world's largest metropolitan regions, its extensive rail network moves millions every day with remarkable efficiency. Many residents don't feel compelled to own cars because public transport simply works.
The lesson isn't that India should copy these cities blindly. Our scale, geography and economics are vastly different.
But one principle remains universal: You cannot solve congestion simply by selling more cars and building flyovers forever.
Why? Because road space is finite, demand isn't.
This means cities need smarter traffic management, better public transport, integrated last-mile connectivity, synchronised traffic signals, stricter parking enforcement and urban planning that reduces unnecessary travel in the first place.
Technology can help too. AI-powered traffic management systems (some cities in India are already implementing this), dynamic signal timing, congestion pricing in select business districts, real-time public transport integration and better data-driven planning can significantly improve traffic flow without pouring another layer of concrete.
Companies can also play their part by encouraging flexible work hours and hybrid offices. If every organisation insists on everyone travelling at exactly the same time, even the widest expressway eventually becomes a bottleneck.
For individuals, the solutions are already out in the open, but admittedly less glamorous. Ideas like carpooling, using Metro trains and combining errands to avoid making multiple trips are not revolutionary ideas, but millions making small changes can collectively create a noticeable impact.
Until then, perhaps the automobile industry should stop advertising horsepower altogether. Because in India's biggest cities, the most impressive specification isn't horsepower; it's patience.
And unlike cars, that isn't available on EMI.
(Amit Chaturvedi is Senior Executive Editor, NDTV)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
