Galway is ranked the 71st worst city in the world for traffic congestion in a new global report published this week.

Drivers in Galway have lost a total of 62 hours to congestion this year, and the impact is placed at 34th greatest in Europe, worse than major cities like Lyon and Bordeaux in France, Vienna in Austria and Antwerp in The Netherlands.

However, the INRIX 2025 Global Traffic Scorecard shows that the position is actually improving for Galway motorists.

Last year, it was the 56th worst for congestion in the world, with 67 hours lost to traffic, and in 2023, it was placed 37th, drivers losing 73 hours to congestion.

Peak speeds in Galway have increased from 16mph for the past two years to 20mph in 2025, while off-peak speeds have remained constant at 32 mph for the past three years.

But Galway drivers are actually worse off than the INRIX ranking would indicate — in terms of hours lost to congestion alone it is the 42nd worst in the world.

Hours lost is the actual amount of extra time a typical driver spends stuck in congestion (compared to free-flow), while the INRIX rank is a city’s overall severity score, calculated by combining those lost hours with the city’s population, giving bigger cities more weight for their massive delays.