Cities to Avoid Driving Through in Europe

A new study has unveiled the most congested cities in Europe for driving in, with Brussels emerging top of the list. Poland and the UK are also places where urban driving can be a nightmare, while Spain and the Nordic countries offer a smoother journey. According to the study, drivers in the home of the European Commission face delays on over 37.7% of its main roads each day - narrowly beating Warsaw into top spot on the list. Another Polish city, Wroclaw, is in third place.

It’s bad news for the Brits too. Despite the congestion charge, few Londoners will be surprised to find their city comes in fourth overall, while Edinburgh and Belfast also make the top ten. And before the Welsh start singing the praises of their roads, they should take note that Cardiff at number 26 is one of a further five UK cities that make the overall list.

Driving in much of France is a happier experience - once you can escape Paris and Marseilles no other French city is listed. And it’s not just Germany’s autobahns that allow traffic to flow smoothly - its most congested city, Munich, comes just 28th in the list. But once they’ve made it into the table, there’s no stopping the Germans: Essen, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Berlin are all between 31st and 38th place. With six further cities in the lower levels of the table, Germany has a greater number of congested cities than anywhere else - though this may reflect the number of large cities the country has.

Residents of Spain and the Nordic countries are most likely to escape the jams. Only three Scandinavian cities make the top 20 - Oslo is 16th with 26% of roads congested, while its Swedish counterpart Stockholm has just six percent. And so much for our preconceptions of angry Latin drivers hooting their horns in fury. In Spain it seems gridlock is relatively rare. Barcelona comes in seventeenth place, but its other major cities are all in the lower echelons of the table. Bottom of the table of 59 cities - and therefore best for drivers - comes Zaragoza, where just one and a half percent of the roads are clogged.

The table has been produced by leading satnav provider TomTom. Rankings are based on how fast cars can travel on a city’s road network - as measured by the anonymous speed data TomTom collects every day from drivers who use its devices.

(Cities are ranked according to how fast cars can travel on the street network. A city’s traffic is defined as congested if drivers can travel at only 70% or less of the posted speed limit, meaning that an hour-long commute would include 20 minutes or more of significant delays. The percentages refer to the percentage of main roads (four highest road classes) that experienced congestion as defined above during a day and only cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants were included.)

The top ten is as follows: