Ottawa is suffering from congestion.
Not a head cold, but definitely a headache for commuters.
According to a new study, Ottawa has the 3rd worst traffic congestion in Canada. Only drivers in Vancouver and Toronto have it worse.
GPS equipment retailer, TomTom, has released its annual Traffic Index. It measures traffic congestion in cities around the world based on GPS data over the past year.
Ottawa’s overall congestion level is 28%. That means, on average, it takes drivers 28% more time to complete a trip than it would in “free-flowing” traffic.
But at peak commute times, that can increase to a whopping 70%.
According to TomTom a driver in Ottawa with a 30 minute commute, can spend an extra 22 minutes a day stuck in traffic. That’s an extra 85 hours in your car every year.
The chair of Ottawa’s Transportation Committee notes the survey is probably more salesmanship than hard science. Nevertheless, Keith Egli acknowledges that Ottawa’s huge construction project is slowing traffic down. “We're building the Confederation Line. It's the single biggest transit, transportation project in the City's history. So I think we're up around 400 construction projects going on at the same time,” says Egli.
He describes it as short-term pain for long-term gain. When finished, the O-Train expansion should help ease congestion.
Compared to the previous year, Ottawa’s overall congestion level has gone up a couple of percentage points. But peak commute times have actually gone down. That perhaps suggests drivers are coping with the problem by finding alternate routes or times to drive.
And, as always, it could be worse. You could be living in Istanbul. According to TomTom, the Turkish city has the worst traffic congestion in the world. At peak times traffic can take 109% longer – over double the time – to navigate through the city.
