Latest statistics from the Tenerife Cabildo show that up to 125,000 vehicles a day pass through the Padre Anchieta area of La Laguna on the TF-5 motorway, and 100,000 do so through Arona by Los Cristianos, on the TF-1, according to data from the meters installed by the island council.
These are the two points on the island where the largest volume of cars, motorcycles, buses, and trucks pass through, an island that has one of the highest rates of vehicles per inhabitant and square kilometre in all of Europe.
Three factors have a decisive influence on the reality that thousands of motorists suffer every day, i.e. traffic jams on the island:
- The dispersion of the Island, with three large population centres (the metropolitan area, the North, and the South).
- The lack of foresight for decades by the government when proposing the necessary road infrastructures.
- The deep-rooted culture of using privately owned vehicles.
This last factor has been an objective pursued by the local government for several years, the promotion of public transport by everyone, not just those who don’t own a car.
There are more than 800,000 vehicles in circulation in Tenerife, an island of 2,034 square kilometres (of which half are natural spaces) inhabited by almost a million people, which represents 821 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants, well above the Spanish average. In fact, 45% of all cars in the Canary Islands are in Tenerife.
The information provided by the metering stations deployed throughout the island by the Cabildo Highway Technical Services reflects an upturn in the average daily traffic intensity on the two highways (TF-1 and TF-5), with density levels that are already higher than those of the year prior to the pandemic (2019).
Official data shows that on Fridays, the day with the greatest number of cars in circulation, the Cabildo metres register more than 115,000 vehicles in 24 hours on the four-lane stretch of motorway between Santa Cruz and La Laguna (Hospital de la Candelaria), however, there are almost 10,000 more than that on the TF-5, which has half the lanes with only two.
In the South, the situation is no better. There are 100,000 cars counted on average every Friday on the two-lane TF-1 passing through Arona past Los Cristianos, and 80,000 by the Tenerife South Airport, and a similar number by the Fañabé junction (Adeje) which is causing more and more traffic jams.
Three out of every four journeys in the south of the island, Tenerife's main tourist destination, are made by people in their own cars, and 5% of the traffic corresponds to heavy vehicles.
The Cabildo stations that measure the average daily traffic intensity are used, above all, by the planning department for changes to our roads: from their classification, calculation of accident rates, and supposedly to find ways to improve the situation!
