Manchester's worst-ever roads for traffic and pollution revealed

You’ve got to have the patience of a saint to drive in Manchester sometimes. Gridlock on Mancunian Way, tailbacks on Princess Road, and a standstill on Great Ancoats Street are all common sights for commuters.

And that congestion does not just affect drivers. Buses get stuck on Chapel Street on a daily basis. The trams can be caught up in the mess of Ashton New Road. Cyclists can sit in exhaust fumes on Wilmslow Road, trying to eke out a path home.

This traffic is one reason why authorities are trying to get more people on to public transport , by increasing the frequency of trams, cutting bus fares to £2, or making hundreds of bee bikes available for hire. But there is one battle which they will always face: the weather.

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Manchester’s rain is infamous, and a tired cliche still wheeled out by visitors, but it’s also why more people take to their cars in the winter months. Anyone who has tried commuting in the first week of October can tell you it feels like traffic is as bad as ever.

However, the latest data from the Department for Transport (DfT) suggests that traffic is still way down on pre-pandemic levels. The statistics for 2021 in Manchester show there were 1.485 billion vehicles on the road, compared to 1.69 billion in 2019.

It is worth noting that 2021 had several months of pandemic restrictions, and data for 2022 has not yet been released. That means a full like-for-like comparison of Mancunian traffic before and after Covid is not yet possible.

That being said, the same government data stretches back to 1993, and shows that in the main, traffic is down in the city.

The busiest-ever year was 2004, when 1.718 billion