City of Helicopters

After a few painful taxi tides through some of the worst city traffic I've ever seen, I understand why Sao Paulo harbors the world's largest fleet of private helicopters. Getting around this crazy metropolis in the air would be a lot easier than navigating the clogged roads. Here's an online article that puts it into much more detail:
Above the rooftops of a megacity: The helicopteromania of São Paulo
by Verena Brähler and Solveig Flörke

São Paulo, during the afternoon peak hour, a sheer endless queue of vehicles stretch along the Avenida Rebouças in São Paulo's upper-class neighbourhood Pinheiros. The exasperated drivers are literally stuck in the streets. They suspect they are part of a grim experiment that is testing the patience of drivers in a reactionary signal system where the green light on the traffic lights switches to red after a mere two seconds. Then suddenly they hear a scornful Zoom-Zoom-Zoom above their heads that easily drowns out the honks of the drivers. Looking up they see a helicopter dashing through the sky, unaffected by traffic and the frustration of the drivers.

With around 500 registered helicopters and 700 flights per day, the metropolitan area of São Paulo with its 20 million inhabitants has the biggest helicopter fleet in the world – even larger than in New York and Tokyo. Every minute the loud machines rumble over the rooftops of the skyscrapers and hotels. In Brazil's financial metropolis time is money and, with the streets being so highly congested, everyone that can afford it takes a helicopter for their day-to-day business operations. Most of the helicopters start their journey at the Campo de Marte airport. It takes only five minutes by helicopter from there to the centre of the city to the north (distance of 11.3km), compared to around 50 minutes by car.

Around seven million vehicles are responsible for the daily 150km 'Stop and Go' traffic in the municipality of São Paulo. Five million cars compete with 42,000 buses, 160,000 trucks and 875,000 motorbikes on the highways and roads of the megacity. According to the figures of the Municipal Secretary for Urban Development, the number of vehicles has more than quadrupled since 1980. And congestion is the price: whereas the average traffic speed during the afternoon peak hours was 24.9km/h in 1980, it is now only 14.8km/h.