Paris tops chart as Europe’s most congested city

The Paris region has the worst traffic jams in Europe, with long queues appearing regularly on motorways around the capital, a US traffic management company says.

Flickr/Thomas@BOD

Parisian drivers lose up to 70 hours per year in traffic jams if they are on the road on Tuesday between 8.00 am and 9.00 am.

The worst traffic jams are on the périphérique - the motorway that circles the capital - and not on streets within Paris, where the city council has been introducing a series of controversial traffic management schemes for several years.

“This study reflects our point of view that Paris and its suburbs need more public transport and bypasses,” the Paris town hall told AFP wire service.

Since 2001, car traffic in Paris has decreased by 21 per cent, it said.

Inrix, the US traffic management company behind the study, says it looked at traffic in six European countries, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands.

London was rated the second-worst city for traffic jams.

For live updates on traffic in France in English, visit the French traffic monitoring body here.