Bristol worst city for driving in the UK according to new survey

Wessex Fleet ranked twenty-five British cities based on congestion rate, the number of crashes between 2017 and 2021, the number of cars per parking space, EV charging point, air quality, vehicles per capita, percentage of roads in poor condition and bus routes.

The research ranked each of the factors from 1-25, with the city with the lowest overall score ranked the best city to drive in, and the city with the most points deemed the worst.

Reading reigned supreme at the top of the list with a low overall score of 53, after scoring well in the number of cars per parking space (1st), congestion (2nd), number of vehicles per capita (3rd), and number of EV charging points (4th) in particular.

In second is Sunderland with 54 points: the city outscored all the others in road conditions, grabbed the 3rd place regarding road safety, 4th place for bus routes, and 5th for EV charging points and air quality.

Coventry rounded out the top three and got the bronze medal with a score of 59, ranking top for EV charging points (per 100,000 people) and congestion, while also having good quality road surfaces.

Some other interesting findings of the survey:

• Stoke-on-Trent has had the least city centre crashes
• Edinburgh keeps drivers waiting with the highest congestion times
• Leeds has a poor ratio of car parking spaces to registered vehicles
• Liverpool has fewer cars on the roads with the lowest number of vehicles per capita
• Hull and Sunderland have the best quality road surfaces
• Portsmouth has the least bus routes in the city

Bristol, Bradford, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, however, are the cities which drivers might happily avoid – if they can.

Bristol ranked in the bottom five for numerous variables, including road condition (24th), road safety (23rd), congestion (21st), and air quality (21st).

Bradford ranked the second bottom of the list struggling across the board for a whole range of variables. The only part in which the West Yorkshire city scored well on was congestion (6th), while it was poor for the number of vehicles per capita (24th), road condition (23rd), parking (22nd), and EV charge points (22nd).

As for Birmingham, parking (23rd), road safety (20th), and EV charging points (20th) were the reasons why to end up at the miserable end of the ranking.