Traffic congestion in Europe
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TomTom
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26th April, 2010
A new study has identified Europe’s 59 most congested
cities for drivers – and Brussels (Belgium) is top of the list. 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 37.7% 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.
Homes of happy drivers
Residents of Spain and the Nordic countries are most likely to escape the traffic jams. Only three
Scandinavian cities make the top 20 – Oslo is 16th with 26% of roads congested, while its Swedish
counterpart Stockholm has just 6%.
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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 1.5% of the roads are clogged. Is this the model other European planners need to
follow?
How the rankings work
The table has been produced by 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 70% 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. IQ Routes is integrated into all TomTom European maps.
Note:
1. The research was based on TomTom’s real travel times database, compiled over years of researching
and tracking road speeds with the help of millions of TomTom users worldwide. Travel information is sent
anonymously every day when TomTom users connect their device to TomTom HOME, a desktop software. Through
the TomTom community of more than thirty million users, TomTom has collected more than 1.8 trillion speed
measurements to date. More than a billion new measurements are collected each day. The result is
realistic travel time information for every five minutes, every day of the week.
2. Cities are ranked according to how fast cars can travel on the street network. A city’s traffic is
defined as congested if drivers can travel at only 70% or less of the posted speed limit, meaning that an
hour-long commute would include 20 minutes or more of significant delays.
3. The percentages refer to the percentage of main roads (4 highest road classes) that experienced
congestion as defined above during a day.
4. Only cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants were included.
5. The full list of the most congested cities is:
| 1.Brussel |
| 2.Warszawa |
| 3.Wroclaw |
| 4.London |
| 5.Edinburgh |
| 6.Dublin |
| 7.Belfast |
| 8.Marseille |
| 9.Paris |
| 10.Luxembourg |
| 11.Milano |
| 12.Rotterdam |
| 13.Birmingham |
| 14.Roma |
| 15.Amsterdam |
| 16.Oslo |
| 17.Barcelona |
| 18.Budapest |
| 19.Napoli |
| 20.Poznan |
| 21.Lódz |
| 22.Torino |
| 23.Palermo |
| 24.Praha |
| 25.Genova |
| 26.Cardiff |
| 27.Wien |
| 28.München |
| 29.Leeds |
| 30.Kraków |
| 31.Essen |
| 32.Hamburg |
| 33.Lisboa |
| 34.Sheffield |
| 35.Stuttgart |
| 36.Köln |
| 37.Düsseldorf |
| 38.Berlin |
| 39.Tallinn |
| 40.Helsinki |
| 41.Nürnberg |
| 42.Madrid |
| 43.Frankfurt |
| 44.Hannover |
| 45.Glasgow |
| 46.Bremen |
| 47.København |
| 48.Bratislava |
| 49.Sevilla |
| 50.Bern |
| 51.Vilnius |
| 52.Leipzig |
| 53.Dresden |
| 54.Dortmund |
| 55.Málaga |
| 56.Stockholm |
| 57.Zagreb |
| 58.Valencia |
| 59.Zaragoza |
About TomTom N.V.
TomTom N.V. is a provider of location and navigation solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands
it employs over 3,000 employees worldwide. More than 40 million people daily use its solutions, be
it in the form of dedicated portable navigation devices (PNDs), in-dash car systems or tracking and
tracing solutions for fleet management.
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