See all Motoring NewsEveryone hates traffic jams, but while you might expect London or Paris or Rome to feature in the top ten most congested cities in Europe, truth is Dublin is just as bad. After examining real time travel data from its LIVE-enabled devices, TomTom has announced that the capital is the sixth most congested in Europe - two places ahead of London.
The Dutch firm has captured over five trillion data measurements across the whole European road network - and that figure is growing by over five billion measurements per day. And it revealed that when congested, drivers in Dublin suffer from journeys that are on average 30 per cent longer than when traffic is flowing freely. During morning rush hour this increases to a staggering 70 per cent.
But the firm believes it offers a solution, in the form of its latest devices that not only pinpoint the congestion, but provide a new route for drivers to steer away from problem areas. Harold Goddijn, CEO of TomTom said "Even when only a percentage of drivers use a different and faster route, the available capacity on the entire road network increases, which benefits all drivers."
The top ten most congested cities, ranked by overall congestion level between January and March 2012 were:
- Warsaw, 42% congestion level
- Marseille, 41%
- Rome, 34%
- Brussels, 34%
- Paris, 32%
- Dublin, 30%
- Bradford - Leeds, 28%
- London, 27%
- Stockholm, 27%
- Hamburg, 27%