Russia (bbabo.net), - Moscow has improved its position in the traffic congestion rating of world cities in 2021, according to the mayor's portal mos.ru. The rating is compiled by the Dutch manufacturer of GPS navigation devices, TomTom. Istanbul ranked first. As in previous years, the rating evaluates Moscow and the Moscow region together as the Moscow region.
At the top of the list are cities where restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have almost been lifted and activity has been restored. Cities that are ranked lower, almost all still have certain restrictions on movement around the city.
The index of congestion of roads in Moscow, the compilers of the rating estimated at 61 percent. This means that the average travel time was 61 percent longer than baseline, without congestion. According to TomTom, in practice, this is only five minutes plus to the daily trip.
In Moscow and the Moscow Region in 2021, business activity was higher than in many cities around the world. Abnormally free capital roads were only seven days a year. At the same time, there was no hard lockdown in Moscow this year, city residents went to work and on business, transport worked as usual. Similar figures were recorded in London (five days), and in San Francisco an atypically low traffic congestion was recorded for 23 days, in Tel Aviv - 37 days.
As explained on the portal, Moscow managed to achieve this result through a number of measures. The city introduced restrictions for trucks and optimized the speed of vehicles (increased on highways and decreased in the center), installed smart traffic lights, organized new lanes by re-marking, and built roads. In Moscow, 1,121.3 kilometers of new roads appeared in 2011-2021. This is 20 percent of the existing street and road network.
A network of dedicated lanes for land transport is also being developed. More than 390 kilometers of such lanes have already been introduced, along which only buses, electric buses and taxis move. Thanks to this, the speed of their movement in 2021 increased by six percent compared to 2020.
Traffic congestion in the Russian capital remained at the level of 2019, although there were 350,000 more cars in the city. And in 11 years their number has increased by almost three million. Now more than 8.55 million cars are registered in Moscow and the Moscow region (in 2010 there were 5.7 million).
Despite this, the average speed of traffic in the capital has not decreased in recent years. In 2021, it was 55 kilometers per hour, which is even slightly higher than the average speed in 2019. According to experts, the level of traffic congestion depends not only on the number of cars, but also on the weather and repairs, which restrict traffic.
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