Skip to main content

European traffic volumes moving back to fast lane

Most countries are getting back to pre-Covid levels of activity
By David Arminas July 31, 2020 Read time: 1 min
Still lots of room for more vehicles on Europe's roads (© Kloeg008 | Dreamstime.com)

Vehicle miles travelled (VMT) in the UK are running at 83% of pre-Covid levels, according to the latest pan-European figures compiled by analytics and connected car specialist Inrix.

The VMT update, called European Passenger Travel During Covid-19, covers the beginning of March to the end of June. It shows the impact of lockdown on traffic on European roads.

Throughout Europe, 16 of the 19 countries analysed have reached their respective pre-Covid levels of travel.

Belgium, Ireland and the UK are lagging behind and Spain continues its large VMT growth at an average of 19% per week for the month.

In the UK, Liverpool is the only area to surpass the national level.

This indicates much more travel is happening outside of major metropolitan areas, as people work from home and employment centre activity remains low, said the company.

Over the past four weeks, London has averaged a growth rate of 3% and Cardiff saw growth of 7%.

While this difference seems minimal, notes Inrix, it shows that the VMT in Cardiff is actually growing at a rate that is 75% faster than London.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Dynamic toll payments on Virginia’s 495 express lanes
    October 19, 2012
    Private sector operator, Transurban, operators of Virginia’s I-495 express lane, has unveiled the highway’s incident management centre where the flow of vehicles will be monitored on a widescreen monitor displaying a dozen camera angles. The new lanes are expected to open by the end of fall. The centre will monitor traffic volume 24/7 in order to compute toll rates. The new roadway, connecting the Dulles toll road to the I-395/I-95/Springfield interchange fourteen miles to the south, will charge drivers dyn
  • Observing driver behaviour in real traffic condition
    March 16, 2016
    The EU’s UDRIVE project will investigate driver behaviour in terms of road safety and the decarbonisation of road transport, as Nicole van Nes and Silvia Curbelo explain. There were nearly 25,700 fatalities on European Union (EU) roads in 2014 or, to look it another way, roughly 70 people are killed in traffic accidents on European roads every day - and many more are injured. Around 22% of the fatalities are pedestrians, 15% will be motorcycle riders and 8% cyclists. So despite the improvements in road safe
  • Learning from informal transit networks
    March 30, 2021
    When it comes to public transportation, the Minority World could take lessons in equity from the mobility infrastructure of emerging market cities, says Devin de Vries of WhereIsMyTransport
  • Single system simplicity for smarter city transport
    February 23, 2017
    All encompassing, city-wide transport monitoring and control systems are beginning to make their way onto the market, as Colin Sowman hears. The futuristic vision of cities where everything is connected and operated with maximum efficiency by a gigantic computer remains a distant prospect but related sectors and services are beginning to coalesce: transport monitoring and control for instance.