Ottawa traffic congestion declined more in 2020 than any other major Canadian city, study says

An annual study on traffic congestion in major cities showed that Ottawa's congestion declined more in 2020 than in any other major Canadian city studied.

The survey was released by TomTom, a Dutch electronics company behind satellite navigation devices. It found that Ottawa had 134 days when traffic congestion levels were less than half of the same day in 2019.

“These are changes we have never seen before, in doing all of our traffic research,” said Nick Cohn, a traffic expert with TomTom.

While traffic congestion declined everywhere in 2020, because of COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions and stay-at-home orders, Ottawa saw its congestion decline the most out of the 12 Canadian cities included in the TomTom 2020 Traffic Index.

It appears the ease with which Ottawa's workforce, in government and high-tech, have switched to working from home, as opposed to other areas with more workers in manufacturing or natural resources.

“We've seen cities in other parts of North America, for example in Silicon Valley and Washington DC, with declines that look like Ottawa's,” noted Cohn. “Cities that have, for example, the oil industry and intensive agriculture, like Fresno or Bakersfield in California, their patterns looked a lot more like Edmonton's.”

As 2020 forced many of us to adapt to working from home, Cohn hopes some of these lessons will stick with us after the pandemic ends.

“I hope that we all keep some of this flexibility, and we've learned that we can be productive from home if we need to be and maybe not go to the office every day of the week, and save some of that wasted travel time, wasted fuel, and emissions.”