Inrix: Congestion cost UK motorists over £37bn in 2017

The UK is the third most congested country in Europe and the tenth most congested country in the world where costs amounted to more than £37.7bn ($52.2bn) for all drivers in 2017, an average of £1,168 ($2,233) per person. These findings come from 163 Inrix’s annual Global Traffic Scorecard which analysed and ranked the impact of traffic congestion in 1,360 cities across 38 countries.

London remained the UK’s most congested major city for the tenth consecutive year as drivers spent an average of 74 hours in gridlock during peak hours. It cost them £2,430 ($3,354) a year each and the capital £9.5bn ($13.1bn) from direct and indirect costs.

Manchester, Birmingham, Luton and Edinburgh made up the remainder of the top five most congested major cities, with motorists in Manchester stuck in congestion for 39 hours during peak hours, and 10% of their total drive time in gridlock. It cost each of them £1,403 ($1,937) and the city £345m ($476m), while drivers in Birmingham spent over 9% of their total drive time in congestion, costing the city £632m ($876m).

City Centre Insights revealed that peak hours in Central London were the worst time and place for drivers in the capital, where they spent an average of 23% of their time in congestion at an average speed of under 5 mph.

Results from Britain’s most congested roads found that London roads were the busiest during rush-hour, with the A406 from Chiswick Roundabout to Hanger Lane ranked as the UK’s most congested road, in which motorists spent a total of 56 hours in congestion.

In addition, drivers travelling into and out of the capital during peak hours spent 16% of their time in gridlock with an average speed of 12.8 mph.

A full copy of the report and additional findings are available on the %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external website Inrix website link false http://inrix.com/press-releases/scorecard-2017-uk/ false false%>.