Traffic jams, the great Parisian shame

Paris is the most congested French city during rush hours. Drivers have lost 120 hours in 2023 due to traffic jams.

The location technology specialist TomTom publishes its Traffic Index today. This annual report is based on data reported every day by over 600 million navigation systems and smartphones worldwide. For each city, TomTom calculates the average travel time per kilometer based on the total time spent covering the millions of kilometers traveled across the network in 2023.

The TomTom Traffic Index shows travel times in different cities and ranks them according to the slowest speed in each city.

Unsurprisingly, static factors such as the number of intersections and traffic lights, the proportion of express lanes or speed limits, and dynamic factors such as traffic jams, roadworks, and bad weather severely impact traffic flow in the French capital.

In 2023, a Parisian’s journey was slowed by 53 seconds per kilometer driven due to congestion, totaling +8 minutes 50 seconds for a typical 10-kilometer trip.

Paris is the city where drivers lose the most time in traffic jams during peak hours. A driver spends an average of 1 hour and 6 minutes in their car to complete a typical 10-kilometer trip twice a day during morning and evening rush hours — but nearly half (31 minutes) of this travel time is lost due to traffic. Drivers making this daily trip lost 120 hours in traffic jams in 2023, almost 11 hours more than in 2022.

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