A new study has unveiled Europe’s 59 most congested
cities for drivers with Brussels top of the list and Cardiff is one
of the worst for jams in the UK.
Poland and the UK are also places where urban driving can be a
nightmare, while Spain and the Nordic countries offer a smoother
journey.
According to the study, drivers in the home of the European Commission
face delays on over 37.7pc of its main roads each day – narrowly beating
Warsaw into top spot on the list. Another Polish city, Wroclaw , is in
third place.
It’s bad news too for the Brits: despite the congestion
charge, few Londoners will be surprised to find their city comes in
fourth overall, while Edinburgh and Belfast also make the top 10.
And before the Welsh start singing the praises of their roads, they
should take note that Cardiff at number 26 is one of a further five UK
cities that make the overall list.
Driving in much of France is a happier experience - once you can escape
Paris and Marseilles , no other French city is listed. And it’s not
just Germany ’s autobahns that allow traffic to flow smoothly: its most
congested city, Munich , comes just 28th in the list. But once they’ve
made it into the table, there’s no stopping the Germans: Essen , Hamburg
, Stuttgart , Cologne , Düsseldorf and Berlin are all between 31st and
38th place. With six further cities in the lower levels of the table,
Germany has a greater number of congested cities than anywhere else –
though this may reflect the number of large cities the country has.
Residents of Spain and the Nordic countries are most likely to escape
the jams. Only three Scandinavian cities make the top 20 – Oslo is 16th
with 26pc of roads congested, while its Swedish counterpart Stockholm
has just 6pc.
And so much for our preconceptions of angry Latin drivers hooting their
horns in fury: in Spain , it seems gridlock is relatively rare.
Barcelona comes in seventeenth place, but its other major cities are all
in the lower echelons of the table. Bottom of the table – and therefore
best for drivers – comes Zaragoza , where just 1.5pc of the roads are
clogged. Is this the model other European planners need to follow?
The table has been produced by leading satnav provider TomTom. Rankings
are based on how fast cars can travel on a city’s road network – as
measured by the anonymous speed data TomTom collects every day from
drivers who use its devices. Wherever drivers were travelling at 70pc or
less of the speed limit, traffic was defined as congested.
The data is collected for use in TomTom’s unique IQ Routes™ technology,
which calculates the fastest route round a city at any time of day.
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