Brussels crowned European capital of traffic jams
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EU officials driving to work can spend hours stuck in traffic (Photo: EUobserver)
The capital of Europe, Brussels, is also the bloc's most congested city in terms of traffic jams, a study carried out by a commercial satellite navigation system provider shows.
According to the study, drivers in the home EU's main institutions face delays of over of 37.7 percent of its main roads each day. Poland's capital, Warsaw, came second, followed by the southern Polish city of Wroclaw.
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London is only fourth on the list, followed by Edinburgh and Ireland's capital, Dublin.
At the other end of the 59-city ranking is the Spanish town of Zaragoza, where just 1.5 percent of its roads are clogged. Valencia, followed by Croatia's capital Zagreb and Stockolm are also not too stressful places to drive, even during rush hour.
The listing was produced by satellite navigation provider TomTom, based on how fast cars can travel on a city's road network in relation to the legal speed limit.
This was measured by the speed data TomTom collects every day from drivers who use its devices. Wherever drivers were travelling at 70 percent or less of the speed limit, traffic was defined as congested.
The ranking does not include Romania's notoriously jammed capital, Bucharest, where tourists are advised to take a margin of three hours when heading towards the airport, only 16 km away from the city centre.
But rides in Brussels during rush hours can also be annoyingly slow. "It takes me almost an hour to drive to work in the morning, it's a seven-kilometre ride which normally takes ten minutes," one European Parliament official said.
Public transportation, although fairly efficient in the city centre, is poor when you live on the outskirts, where the nicer residential areas of Brussels are located, the official added.
The city is meanwhile trying to encourage greater use of bicycles and has expanded its "Villo" bike rental programme to 2,500 bikes that can be rented at 180 points across town.
A similar scheme has been developed by the European Commission for staff members. But its highest ranking officials still prefer rides in their black limousines.
The full list of the most congested cities:
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.Lodz
22.Torino
23.Palermo
24.Praha
25.Genova
26.Cardiff
27.Wien
28.Munchen
29.Leeds
30.Krakow
31.Essen
32.Hamburg
33.Lisboa
34.Sheffield
35.Stuttgart
36.Koln
37.Dusseldorf
38.Berlin
39.Tallinn
40.Helsinki
41.Nurnberg
42.Madrid
43.Frankfurt
44.Hannover
45.Glasgow
46.Bremen
47.Kobenhavn
48.Bratislava
49.Sevilla
50.Bern
51.Vilnius
52.Leipzig
53.Dresden
54.Dortmund
55.Malaga
56.Stockholm
57.Zagreb
58.Valencia
59.Zaragoza
