The pandemic reduces traffic jams in the world by 19%, according to TomTom

Madrid, Jan 16 (EFE) .- The coronavirus pandemic has altered transport and has managed to reduce world congestion by 19%, a percentage that even reaches 26% at peak times and breaks with the trend of increases that was observed year after year, according to a study carried out by the technology company TomTom.
In the case of Spain, all cities have seen their congestion stopped or reduced, the first time this has happened in the 10 years that TomTom has been conducting this study.
The decrease is more pronounced in cities with the highest volume of traffic, such as Madrid or Barcelona, ​​but the reduction is generalized.
BARCELONA, THE MOST CONGESTED SPANISH CITY
Barcelona continues to be the most congested with an average level of 22% in 2020, measured as the extra time it takes a driver to make a journey compared to a situation of fluid traffic.
The traffic data provided by TomTom, which comes from 600 million connected devices, also reflects drops in traffic jams in the 25 most congested cities in Spain.
After Barcelona, ​​the most congested are Granada (20%), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (18%), Valencia (17%), Palma de Mallorca, Santander and Murcia (16%, respectively).
With all this, the pandemic has resulted in 43 fewer hours lost by the people of Barcelona in traffic jams during rush hours. In the case of Madrid, this decrease is even more pronounced with 48 hours less than in 2019.
MOSCOW, THE MOST CONGESTIONED IN THE WORLD
Although the ranking of the world’s most congested cities has barely altered from 2019, the main change has been the extent to which traffic jams have decreased as a result of the global pandemic.
Moscow has been the city that has experienced the most traffic jams in the world.
Of the 416 cities included in the report prepared by the navigation firm, 387 experienced a significant decrease in traffic jams and only 13 cities registered increases.
Since TomTom started doing this study a decade ago, traffic jams have been increasing globally.
With the health crisis unleashed by covid-19, congestion at peak hours has fallen on average by 26%, in North America the decrease has been 40%, in Europe 24% and in Asia 11%.