Quick holiday tips from Waze

‘Tis the season for gift shopping and giving, all kinds of festivities, and traffic, tons of it. Waze has a couple of tips to help you avoid the extra stress the season brings. According to the traffic and navigation app, the busiest time and day for Canadian roads across the country last year was December 22 between three and five in the afternoon. For those in smaller metros like Collingwood, Ontario and Canmore, Alberta, they see a significant rise in traffic this time of the year with double the number of Waze users on the road.

Now, if you want to get yourself in the spirit of the season, Waze and Spotify has some interesting nuggets to share about this. The most requested song unsurprisingly is Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You. But the three other extremely popular tracks are It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas by Michael Bublé, What Child Is This by Lindsey Stirling, and Noel – Live by Chris Tomlin.

TomTom Traffic Index: Vancouver is most congested city; Toronto ranks 7th in North America

TomTom, maker of GPS hardware and apps,  released its sixth Traffic Index comparing travel times during non-congested hours with travel times in peak hours. Three Canadian cities – Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal – remain in the top 10 congested metros, with the latest index finding Vancouver has surpassed Los Angeles for the first time, ranking the most congested city in North America.

Toronto ranks seventh overall, where on average journey times are 27 per cent longer than when traffic in the city is flowing freely. Journey times are 54 per cent and 72 per cent longer in the morning peak and evening peak versus non-congested hours, respectively.

TomTom’s Traffic Index reports the most congested day in Toronto during the quarter was Friday, June 28, 2013, which can be attributed to heavy rain fall and flooding in the GTA on the day. 

IBM Study: We're commuting longer and farther than ever.

The daily commute in some of the world’s most economically important international cities is longer and more grueling than before imagined, reflecting the failure of transportation infrastructure to keep pace with economic activity, according to IBM’s first global Commuter Pain study released recently.

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