Edinburgh gridlock worse than Paris jams

Published on Saturday 17 April 2010 20:59

EDINBURGH has become one of Europe's most gridlocked cities since the tram construction project began.

A new traffic survey yesterday revealed that one third of motorists trying to make their way through the capital face jams.

The disruption to traffic is worse than traditional blackspots such as Paris and Milan, and in the UK only London is worse than Edinburgh for jams.

The survey was based on data compiled by TomTom, the satellite navigation company, which tracked car speeds across Europe.

Overall, Brussels was the most gridlocked city, followed by Warsaw and a second Polish city, Wroclaw (formerly Breslau).

The rest of the ten worst cities, listing the most congested first, were: London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Belfast, Marseilles, Paris and Luxembourg.

TomTom looked at the proportion of cars in each city that experienced gridlock on a daily basis and found that 34.76 per cent of motorists in London put up with traffic jams every day. In Edinburgh, the figure was 34.41 per cent. In contrast, traffic in Glasgow was far faster moving, with only 14.7 per cent of motorists experiencing gridlock.

Bottom of the table Brussels came in at 37.7 per cent.

Motorists have blamed the traffic chaos on the disruption caused by Edinburgh's 545 million project to reintroduce a tram service to the city. The project began in 2008 and is expected to be completed by 2014.

A TomTom spokesman said the data was compiled from the anonymous speed information that the company collects every day from drivers using its devices.

Edinburgh City Council's transport convener Gordon Mackenzie said: "Frankly, I question the reliability of these figures. Did they, for example, take account of the fact that over a third of Edinburgh's roads now have traffic-calming measures?"