Are you willing to sit in a car for about 142 hours a year? If so, Istanbul may be the city for you. An annual report by an automotive navigation system producer puts the Turkish city at the top of its ranking of dozens of cities with the worst traffic congestion.
The report compiled by TomTom for 2021 says that traffic levels – which decreased in 2020 with the onset of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions such as curfews – are gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels, with countries lifting restrictions after a drop in the number of cases.
Istanbul, Turkey’s most crowded city with a population of over 15 million, averaged 62% congestion in 2021. The congestion rate represents the heaviness of the traffic peak travel times in the city. At 62%, a normally 30-minute trip along a relatively empty road takes 19 minutes longer. The report says the increase in traffic was noticeable in the city last year and average travel times increased by six minutes per day. Istanbul overtook Moscow, which trails 1% behind while Ukraine’s Kyiv was third on the list with 56% congestion, ahead of Bogota and Mumbai. Saudi Arabia’s Mecca had the lowest congestion rate at around 7%, from 11% in 2019, ahead of Spain’s Bilbao, Helsinki and Katowice in Poland.
Still, overall traffic was lower in the world compared to figures from 2019, a year when the impact of the pandemic had not yet been felt yet. Worldwide, congestion was 10% lower compared to 2019, with a decrease of 19% at peak hours. Out of the 404 cities included in the report, 283 experienced lower congestion on average than in 2019. However, the report says extreme fluctuations were recorded in traffic throughout the year, swings linked to ever-changing restrictions based on the trends in the pandemic. It also ties record high congestions to extreme weather conditions, pointing to hourly congestion levels in a quarter of the cities included in the report reaching their highest hourly readings in February 2021.
Another report published in 2020 by researchers from Istanbul's Yeditepe University found that residents of the metropolis lost 70 minutes a day due to the city's high traffic density. The report, which monitored traffic data along 5,000 kilometers (3,107 miles) of roadway in Istanbul for a year, found that it could take 50 minutes to travel a distance that normally would take only 15 minutes.
The city does have a relatively short metro network that authorities plan to expand, especially on the European side infamous for its traffic snarls. The Metrobus rapid transit system is also a viable option for those seeking to dodge congestion, especially during rush hours. Still, in regions that lack these options, like the Trans-European Motorway (TEM), one of two major highways crossing the city, sitting in traffic remains an inevitability.