It will come as no comfort to Auckland drivers returning to work after holidays that the roads in the City of Sails are as tediously clogged as they remember.

According to the Austroads Congestion and Reliability Review, Auckland is a poor performer for its size.

The report compared levels of congestion and travel time volatility between Auckland, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide - all similarly sized cities - along with some slightly smaller North American counterparts.

CHRIS SKELTON/FAIRFAX NZ Commuters on the Northwestern motorway.

Out of that group, Auckland performed worst across "most measures". These included the highest travel time delay, morning and afternoon peak reliability.

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With an average speed of 77.6kmh, Auckland had the slowest moving motorway flow. Adelaide's was fastest, with vehicles travelling on average at 86.2kmh. Canada's capital Ottawa, however, saw its commuters moving at an illegally speedy - by Kiwi standards - 104.4kmh.

St Lukes Rd was Auckland's most sluggish main thoroughfare - with cars crawling along at an average 22kmh. The Northern Gateway toll road was deemed our zippiest with average speeds of 98kmh.

Aucklanders were also the most delayed peak hour commuters out of the group. Drivers in the larger cities of Melbourne and Sydney were significantly worse-off, however.

Journeys during peak hours would add an average of 16.5 per cent travel time for Auckland drivers - almost double the lags experienced by drivers in Perth or Brisbane.

Austroads cited Auckland's shore-bound city limits as a main culprit for its congestion.

"Auckland's geography, particularly its harbours and waterways, impose constraints on the transport system, meaning the main transport links are confined to narrow corridors," the report said.

It also gave comparatively limited public transport options and the high availability of affordable city-centre parking as reasons for commuters to drive to work, contributing to, and despite of, the gridlock.

Julius Caesar, the report noted, had resolved ancient Rome's traffic problems by outlawing the use of private vehicles on the city streets during the first 10 hours of the day.

Austroads saw technology as a more realistic aid for transport management in modern cities, however.

"For example, consumers today can use a smart phone to select the best route for their journey, access congestion and road closure data in near real time, allowing them to plan ahead, select the best route and navigate around incidents. In future, autonomous vehicles will access this information directly, and execute a journey with no human intervention."

The report made a number of traffic trend predictions for beyond 2015, including lanes for autonomous vehicles only, the peak and decline of private car ownership and the launching of a fleet of driverless taxis.