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Bucharest City is ranked 5th in the TomTom Traffic Index 2016 (TTTI) of the world's cities with the heaviest traffic congestions, with the higher use of personal vehicles to the detriment of other means of mass transit, heavy traffic and the absence of parking places being seen as the city's main problems by its denizens, reads a study released on Thursday by the Bucharest Community Foundation (FCB).
At the same time, undersize pedestrian infrastructure and mass transit problems compound to make Bucharest a city that is less favorable to modern space mobility, according to FCB.
According to TTTI 2016, included in FCB's "Bucharest: Community Vital Signs" report patterned on Canadian Vital Signs method, drivers in Bucharest can expect to spend on average, 50 percent extra travel time stuck in traffic anytime of the day, and up to 98 percent in the evening peak periods versus a free flow, or uncongested, situation - adding up to 218 hours of extra travel time per year.
In 2015, according to FCB, Bucharest was leading the pack in the EU, ranked sixth in the world among the cities with the heaviest traffic congestion. Back then, drivers in Bucharest could expect to spend on average 43 percent extra travel time stuck in traffic.
FCB says the Vital Signs indicators in key life quality areas were collected in the last months of 2016 straight from the public bodies generating data, to which it added information taken over form academic research or studies coordinated by the city's universities, covering a three-time period for the areas under consideration (2013-2016).
