India / Which were the 10 cities with highest traffic congestion in the world in 2020?

Bengaluru: Bengaluru has yet again made it to the not-so-enviable list of the world's most congested cities, despite days of continuous stringent lockdown. The TomTom Traffic Index 2020 released on Wednesday said that Bengaluru has the world’s the sixth-worst and India’s second-worst city in terms of traffic. Mumbai is the second-worst in the world, according to this list preceded by Moscow and followed by Bogota, Manila and Istanbul. 

Among the 416 cities spread across 57 countries, India capital New Delhi fares slightly better at the eighth position in the pandemic year. However, thanks to the COVID-19 induced lockdown, there has been an improvement of 20% from 2019. In 2019, the same index had found Bengaluru to be the worst among 416 cities.

Following the global trend of decreasing congestion, Bengaluru too saw a dip of traffic jams by 20%. Incidentally, the report said that while the dip was 35% in the morning, it was slightly lower at 32% in the evening. There were 147 days of low traffic with April being the least congested and January being the most congested month.

While congestion levels in Bengaluru were 70% for January and February, it dropped to 50% in March as the city was put under lockdown.

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The monthly congestion level saw a major dip in April and saw a steady increase since July as lockdown regulations were eased.

The data for the index is generated through 600 million connected devices which the company says is an authoritative indicator of people movement, economic activity levels, among other activities.

Ralf-Peter Schäfer, TomTom’s Vice President of Traffic and Travel, said, “Last year, we announced that global congestion levels in 2019 had increased for the ninth consecutive Traffic Index. In 2020, we saw a vastly different picture. From lockdowns to closed borders, people movement changed – and it changed very fast.”