Freight vehicle congestion in Australia’s five major cities – 2020

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This publication is the second in a planned regular series that uses vehicle telematics data to provide measures of traffic congestion for freight vehicles on 53 selected routes across Australia’s five mainland state capital cities—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The selected routes comprise the major motorways, highways and arterial roads within each city that service both passenger and freight vehicles. The estimates presented in this report cover calendar year 2020, and includes a comparison with 2019 traffic congestion measures.

The results show that freight vehicle congestion decreased across all five mainland Australian capital cities in 2020, largely due to lower commuter activity on roads, particularly in peak periods, as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns. Whilst peak period travel times were less pronounced in 2020 across all cities, this effect was more significant in Sydney and Melbourne, because those cities had larger pre-COVID-19 traffic peaks and experienced longer lockdowns (particularly Melbourne), and less significant in other state capital cities. Copies of the data displayed in the report are available here and on data.gov.au.