Edinburgh Is UK's Second Most Congested City, Says Report

Submitted by edg on Tue, 4 Oct '11 10.07am

In June, SatNav company Tom Tom issued a news release saying that Britain is the most congested country in Europe. Edinburgh made the top 10 of gridlocked cities.

In a new report, TomTom measured the top 50 most congested cities across Britain in the past six months to mark the launch of the Tom Tom International Traffic Foundation. The Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation whose goal is traffic congestion reduction.

Edinburgh came in at number 2 in the UK after London for congestion. Tom Tom says the Scottish capital had 33 per cent more congested roads during rush-hours than at off-peak times. (Roads were considered congested when peak time traffic is 70 per cent slower than at off-peak times.)

Edinburgh also made it into sixth place, for the biggest increase in traffic congestion between March and September 2011 - which is possibly the Edinburgh festival effect. Glasgow was ranked 8th and Aberdeen ranked 10th for biggest increases in congestion.

Only five UK cities saw congestion fall over the past six months: Bedford, Colchester, Newport, York and Chester.

TomTom's research is based on its real travel time database, which has collected more than four trillion speed measurements to date with over a billion new measurements recorded each day.

The ranks are as follows:

Top 10 most traffic clogged cities in the UK:

  1. London
  2. Edinburgh
  3. Oxford
  4. Belfast
  5. Bradford
  6. Manchester
  7. Birmingham
  8. Aberdeen
  9. Southampton
  10. Nottingham

Biggest increase in traffic congestion (September 2011 versus March 2011)

  1. Oxford
  2. Belfast
  3. Bolton
  4. Southampton
  5. Sheffield
  6. Edinburgh
  7. London
  8. Glasgow
  9. Cambridge
  10. Aberdeen