AUTHOR Robert Gillespie

Traffic Congestion Adds Up

Statistics from TomTom have revealed that you may be losing a lot of time stuck in slow moving traffic through their traffic index. It’s also revealed some interesting statistics in regards to the most congested cities within the UK, Belfast is by far in the way ahead of everywhere followed by Bristol, Brighton & Hove, Edinburgh and London, other names in the list include Leeds Bradford, Manchester, Leicester, Liverpool and Sheffield. A large amount of cities are showing increases in congestion on its last year’s statistics with only Edinburgh, Leeds-Bradford and Nottingham being less congested and everywhere else failing to improve.

If you live in Belfast you aren’t getting anywhere soon as journeys take generally 88% longer during free flowing times with Bristol, Brighton and London not falling far behind. However the most shocking of statistics is possible that you spend on average nine days of each year stuck in congestion if you are a UK motorist. This means that the average person according to the average UK lifespan will spend around 726 days in their life time stuck in traffic, granted for a lot of it you may not be the driver but even still it really adds up, that’s almost 2 years of your life in traffic!

The chief executive of TomTom, Harold Goddijn has called for a change in the way traffic is managed as the problem appears to be getting worse. We aren’t the worst offenders however as there are massive traffic problems in Moscow, Washington, Sydney, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Vancouver, Istanbul and Christchurch as well. TomTom are believed to have the world’s largest database of historical travel times and most accurate real time information available, or so they claim. Therefor there is a real need to amend this issue of congestion levels as traditional methods such as building new roads or widening existing ones aren’t proving successful.

Having worked in the car rental industry for over 15 years, he really knows his stuff. Rob heads up our marketing department and as a keen traveller, always has a new location to talk about. Particularly if there is a golf course nearby.

Robert Gillespie

Traveller