New analysis ranks borough third for most traffic in London in 2023

Enfield has been ranked third in London for most traffic volume last year, according to a new analysis of government data.

Tech firm Descartes Systems UK analysed government data on road traffic for 2023 to reveal which borough of London had the highest volume of traffic and whether or not there had been a change pre and post pandemic.

Outer London dominates the list, although the full impact of the expansion of Transport for London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) is not captured by the data as this only happened more than halfway through last year.

Hillingdon ranks as the borough with the most traffic pass through over 2023 (1.436 million miles), followed by Havering (1.117m), Enfield (1.114m), Barnet (1.035m) and Hounslow (1.017m).

Unsurprisingly the busiest boroughs match up with the areas where motorways meet the capital.

But Enfield is one of only two boroughs, along with Sutton, to have seen an increase of traffic since 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. While in 2019 there were 1.112 million traffic miles recorded in Enfield, this has now risen to 1.114m.

Across the UK the total volume of traffic has gone down over the same period.

A previous version of this story mistakenly described the data as showing traffic congestion rather than traffic volume

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