INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard: Traffic congestion costs the average driver in Bristol £800 in 2022

Bristol drivers lost almost four days sat in traffic during 2022 according to a study which ranks the city as the second-most congested in the UK.

The INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard estimates that Bristol drivers spent 91 hours waiting in their vehicle - up from 66 hours in 2021. London tops the list, with the capital hosting the five most congested roads in the UK. Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Hull, Leeds and Leicester also made the list alongside Scottish and Northern Irish capitals Edinburgh and Belfast.

INRIX calculates the cost of lost time for the average driver in Bristol to be £805 and lists one of the city’s roundabouts in the top 10 most congested areas outside of London. The study showed that the A4174 Bristol Ringroad N/B from Hicks Gate Roundabout to Bromley Heath added seven minutes to the average commute - 28 hours per year.

And it isn’t only the average motorist shelling out due to congestion with the waiting times costing the city as a whole around £175m, according to INRIX. Bristol City Council has promised to clamp down on congestion in urban areas - a pledge which saw the introduction of the Clean Air Zone in late 2022. The Band D zone applies a £9 charge to older, more polluting vehicles which enter an area covering most of the city centre and main routes in and out of the city.

As a nation, traffic got worse in 2022 compared to the year prior although most figures are still lower than pre-Covid levels. In fact, Bristol’s statistics show motorists were idle in their cars by less than 12% compared to 2019. London was the only city inside the top 10 to have an increase, of 5%, in waiting times pre-pandemic.

The scorecard states that it “calculates time lost in congestion by employing traffic data across multiple commute sub-areas within a city. Commute sub-areas are identified based upon the concentration of trips concluding within a defined area.”