Another low point for Budapest traffic congestion – We spend over 100 hours a year stuck on the roads

Across the Hungarian capital, drivers now need almost half an hour to cover just 10 kilometres, and rush hour brings even slower progress. Budapest traffic congestion remains firmly in the mid-range compared with Europe’s most gridlocked major cities.

Traffic conditions in Budapest have deteriorated yet again compared to recent years. According to the latest data, in 2024 it took an average of 26 minutes and 33 seconds to cover 10 kilometres in the city centre – a full minute more than the year before, reports Pénzcentrum.

Rush hour is stealing days from us

Travel speeds were even worse during peak periods: the morning rush required 31 and a half minutes to complete 10 kilometres, while the afternoon rush stretched this to over 34 minutes. Anyone commuting 10 kilometres each way during rush hour on every weekday ended the year having lost 110 hours – that is 4 days and 14 hours – to standstill traffic. This is almost 12 hours more than in 2023.

The most challenging day was 17 September, when flood-related closures along the embankments pushed the travel time for 10 kilometres to 35 minutes and 45 seconds.

The Budapest traffic congestion ranks in Europe’s mid-field

According to TomTom’s rankings, Budapest now sits 21st among Europe’s most congested cities. Poznań and Milan show slightly worse figures, while Frankfurt, Zurich, Sofia and Valencia display congestion levels almost identical to those in the Hungarian capital.

Conditions in Copenhagen are only a few seconds better than the Budapest traffic congestion, placing the city firmly within the upper segment of Europe’s mid-table – though the burden on commuters remains considerable.

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2 Comments

  1. And that’s why, the “wise” leadership in the city decided to make half the road become bycicle lanes.

    Because having less roads is the obvious solution to congestion. Right?

    And the proletariat slaves shouldn’t be driving cars anyways. They should walk in the “15 minute city”. Right, our globalist “friends”?

  2. I was going to comment on the dumb bicycle tracks that stand empty most of the time while people suffer in tailbacks, but Mark beat me to it. Just take a look at the abomination in evidence in Ulloi.

    Add to that the persistent speed reductions, pedestrianizations, an explosion of scooTARDS flouting road rules and endangering everyone, decimation of parking availability, and it’s little wonder this is the case. The recent renovation of Rozsa utca saw the number of parking spaces decreased to a third (if that) of what it was, necessitating people to spend an eternity prowling the neighborhood looking for a spot.

    I’m all for making the city more amenable to pedestrians. Absolutely. But this draconian top-down approach motivated by ideological zealotry ain’t it.

    What these globalist-socialist-fascist cretins don’t understand is that people don’t drive into heavy traffic because they like it. They do it because they have to. Penalizing them solves nothing.

    P.S. They can shove their 15-Minute Cities up their hole.

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