Since the lockdown on 23rd March, car leasing firm Leasing Options have been monitoring the traffic in UK and ROI cities.
https://www.leasingoptions.co.uk/news/blog/uk-roi-traffic-before-after-the-covid-19-lockdown/6266
Using TomToms’ live traffic data, they have worked out the average percentage decrease in traffic for each city, at weekday 8am in April (last week) versus the same time in 2019. Here are the results:
| City | % Decrease in Traffic |
| London | 77.61% |
| Birmingham | 81.03% |
| Liverpool | 74.07% |
| Dublin | 83.16% |
| Edinburgh | 77.27% |
| Cardiff | 83.07% |
| Manchester | 82.60% |
| Belfast | 83.52% |
| Newcastle | 80.36% |
Edinburgh remains one of the busiest cities in the UK, with even London seeing a bigger reduction.
Using Google Maps, they have also compared the traffic pre- and post-lockdown to see how we have responded to the new restrictions on travel.
They recorded the post lock-down traffic at around 8.30am on a weekday in April, (peak travel time for many commuters) and compared this to Google’s historical traffic data from before the lockdown.
Here is how Edinburgh looks, for example:
According to the Department for Transport, 1.96 billion vehicles travel through the City of Edinburgh in a single year.
But as the Scottish capital respects the announcement of our PM and Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party, you can see that road traffic has significantly reduced, post-lockdown. Statistics from TomTom show that traffic has dropped by as much as 64% in April, when compared to the 2019 average.
You can find the data for Greater London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Dublin, Cardiff, Manchester, Belfast, and Newcastle on Leasing Options blog here: https://www.leasingoptions.co.uk/news/blog/uk-roi-traffic-before-after-the-covid-19-lockdown/6266
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