But what is this traffic? According to its latest barometer, the manufacturer of GPS navigation systems Tom-Tom reveals a general increase in global and national “congestion”. Of the hundreds of metropolises scrutinized, including the thirty largest French cities, Toulon travels… in the opposite direction.
Its “congestion” index, which illustrates the extent to which an urban area is congested, has fallen quite significantly (from 34 to 31%), and the Var city is even the only one – who would have thought it? – to see their average travel time decrease. Thanks, in particular, to the widening of the A57, and the passage of the motorway into 2×3 lanes east of Toulon? Vincent Martinier, communications director at Tom-Tomprovides some instructive explanations.
What method do you use to measure urban congestion?
From all the partnerships we have with car manufacturers, we collect data on several billion kilometers driven. This is real data, taken from cities around the world. The congestion rate is a calculation method used by all urban planners. We start by studying travel times when traffic is fluid, for example at night, over a full year, which serves as a base time. And we then look throughout the day to see how much this time increases. We take an average, we calculate the congestion index for each city, and we look at its evolution compared to the year before.
What do you think is the impact of the A57 construction site and the change to 2×3 lanes at the start of last year on these figures?
Almost all cities have seen their congestion rates increase. Not Toulon. Toulon is the city where congestion has decreased the most in 2025. And the second truly remarkable fact is that it is the only city where general speed has increased. This is particularly noticeable on the highway (+7 km/h). Obviously, therefore, this A57 project has created a draft on the motorways, and has clearly made it possible to immediately relieve congestion on the Toulon peripheral network. It’s interesting, because today, the trends in cities, like in Paris for example, are more towards reducing the share of road potential, to reduce speed. Here again, this is not the case for Toulon.
Is there a risk of seeing road traffic increase and the rate of congestion reverse again?
We see it in the studies: when we create more roads, when supply increases, we will better manage demand. But there is often a negative impact following. As nature abhors a vacuum, we should see more cars arriving on the highway in a few months. It remains to be seen whether next year we will see a drop in speed and an increase in congestion, or if it was really something beneficial, which will allow traffic to be better drained in the long term. Either way, it’s never a one-size-fits-all solution.
That’s to say ?
Today, we know that motorist demand far exceeds the supply of the road network. So cities must make the effort to offer a sufficiently reliable and efficient public transport service so that people can either no longer take their car at all or adopt multimodal. That is to say, for example, you leave your car at the entrance to the city in a secure parking lot, and you take a tram, or another means of transport, which takes you to the city center. We can no longer ignore this, because in any case, congestion remains the major problem in cities.
The key figures
Very far behind Lyon, the worst student in France in this area with 47.2% congestion, Toulon therefore occupied the 25e place (out of 30 cities analyzed) in the ranking of the most congested metropolises. In sharp decline (3 %) compared to 2024, and with an increasing average speed (36.5 km/h).
During peak hours, the congestion index at the foot of Faron remained high (50.1% in the morning, 63.6% in the evening), but the time lost in traffic jams during these time slots was “only” 54 hours (two days and six hours, all the same…), or 6 hours 23 minutes less than in 2024. Just to compare, the Lyonnais waited 121 hours…
And for the anecdote, the worst day to drive in Toulon in 2025 was Tuesday May 20, taxi mobilization day. with an average congestion level of 86%. We hope you were teleworking that day…
