Saturday

9th Dec 2023

Brussels crowned European capital of traffic jams

  • 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

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