For better or worse, how has COVID changed the way we get around our cities?

You probably already noticed that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot about the way we live our lives, but new data released on Wednesday shows just how much the coronavirus has changed our cities.

A survey of data collected by the navigation technology company TomTom revealed that traffic congestion in cities worldwide was 10 per cent lower last year than it was in 2019, with 283 of the 404 cities surveyed experiencing less traffic on average than they did pre-pandemic.

The drop in vehicle traffic was even more noticeable at rush hour, where congestion levels dropped by an average of 19 per cent, the survey found.

People also travelled at different times in 2021, the data showed. In North America, some cities saw rush hour move by two to three hours as travel habits changed, while in Europe traffic levels in the middle of the day were higher than they were in 2019.

The change in traffic patterns was down to the impact of COVID-19 changing working habits and boosting online shopping, TomTom said.

"The COVID crisis has acted as a catalyst that increased the speed of change in our way to consume. The last-mile sector is experiencing a massive transformation driven by increasing customer requirements who demand more immediate or same-day deliveries and return options," the company's vice president of travel and traffic Ralf Peter Schäfer said.

The 2021 Traffic Index also ranked the cities surveyed to find which were the most and least congested.

The world's worst congestion can be found in Istanbul, the data suggested, where the average driver spends 142 hours a year stuck in traffic.

Turkey's biggest city has a congestion level of 62 per cent, according to TomTom, meaning that average journey times were 62 per cent longer