Spain suffers less congestion than most of Europe and the world
Wednesday, June 5, 2019 @ 9:42 AM
NEXT time you're stuck in a traffic jam anywhere in Spain, count your blessings: none of the country's towns or cities are in the world's top 100 gridlocked locations, nor even in Europe's top 60.
In fact, the Spanish city with the longest traffic queues – Barcelona – is only 118th in the world out of 403 metropolitan areas in 57 countries and 61st in Europe.
Cádiz is the city with Europe's fewest traffic jams and, worldwide, is only beaten by Greensboro-High Point in the USA, which is at number 403.
According to the recently-released TomTom Traffic Index 2018, drivers in the central hub of Barcelona take an average of 29% more time to get to their destination than they would on an empty road or one where cars were flowing freely.
Surprisingly, Madrid is only joint fourth-most gridlocked city in Spain along with Santa Cruz de Tenerife, although this is perhaps less newsworthy when taking into account how acting mayoress Manuela Carmena has been working hard to reduce cars in the central 'almond' of the capital.
The TomTom Index figures were taken for the whole year, meaning the fact that only residents, residents' visitors, public transport, delivery vehicles, emissions-free vehicles and those merely seeking an underground parking space are allowed in the city has made little difference as the restrictions have not been in place long.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com