Why has traffic congestion been a major problem in Buenos Aires?

Traffic congestion in Buenos Aires is a significant urban challenge driven by several historical and structural factors:

• Infrastructure Limitations: While a network of superhighways was planned following World War II, economic and political difficulties prevented its completion, leaving the city without a comprehensive ring of expressways to manage modern traffic volumes.1
• Street Layout: The city center is built on an original colonial foundation featuring narrow streets arranged in a grid pattern, which struggles to accommodate the high volume of contemporary vehicular traffic.21
• Shift in Transportation: In the second half of the 20th century, the automobile and the colectivo (microbus) replaced the tramway and train as the dominant modes of transport, leading to the saturation of the existing street network.1
• Implementation Delays: Although traffic-calming measures—such as speed bumps and closing streets to motor traffic—have been proposed to mitigate congestion, noise, and pollution, little progress had been made in implementing these solutions as of the early 21st century.3