While responsibly social distancing and working from home clogging up bandwidth around the world, our team was wondering just how quiet it was across the world’s great cities. And we found the answer from Citymapper which is an app we use to help navigate around global traffic snarls.
As it turns out, those snarls just don’t exist anymore with most of the world in some form of lockdown. The Citymapper Mobility Index shows the percentage of a city moving around compared to usual. These recent numbers are sobering.
As an example Barcelona only has 3% of its usual traffic, London is at 9%, Tokyo at 10% and the usually gridlocked LA is at only 10% of its usual traffic. This of course has some benefits, it’s better for the environment, first responders can get around more easily and there is a drop in auto accident.s In fact, US auto insurers have just announced a rebate to customers who aren’t or can’t drive. Still we’d rather pay the premiums and wait in traffic jams as we long to visit our favourite cities around the world.
