Stuck in a jam
- UK car commuters losing 129 hours in traffic each year;
- Evening rush-hour jams double the level of the rest of the day;
- Belfast and London top two worst congested cities;
COMMUTING motorists are losing 129 hours a year stuck in traffic jams according to figures revealing city congestion levels are rising steadily year-on-year.
In the fifth annual Traffic Index from TomTom average journeys in 2014 took 29% longer than they would in free-flowing traffic – up from a 27% delay the year before.
Traffic jams in 14 out of Britain’s 17 biggest cities have got worse over the past 12 months. The only city where congestion has improved is Bristol, for the second year running.
Globally, the study’s analysis of 12 trillion pieces of traffic data worldwide revealed that the evening rush hour is the most congested time of day.
In 2014, a typical UK city commuter with a 30 minute drive home spent an extra 66 hours stuck in traffic than they would have done on a free-flowing road.
This, added to the 63 hours stuck in morning traffic, that’s 129 hours wasted in a year.
Nearly every city can expect to double its congestion level during the evening peak, compared with the rest of the day.
