As my car crawls along the highway, inching forward at an interminably slow pace in bumper-to-bumper traffic, my mood vacillates between impatience and sheer annoyance, like when the motorist in the adjacent lane swerves sharply to block my path and gain a mere few inches in the process.

The above is a familiar scene from our daily experience, for if there is one thing that is now as sure as death and taxes, it’s traffic congestion.

Now perhaps the most challenging problem confronting Asian cities, experts have computed the costs, which run into billions of dollars – a real drain on the economy.

This is a result of wasted fuel from all those idling engines, air pollution that threatens to choke our cities, CO2 emissions, and, most importantly, a waste of everyone’s time.

Clearly the problem is huge, but what’s the solution? Just in case you jump to the obvious response—build more roads and widen existing ones—let me dispel that myth straight away.