Edinburgh's 10 busiest road junctions and how traffic levels have fallen at all of them

City-wide reduction in car volumes reflected in lower figures at key pinch-points

Edinburgh’s 10 busiest road junctions have been named by the city council as it reveals a dramatic drop in traffic volumes across the city.

The Barnton junction on Queensferry Road emerged as the Capital’s busiest junction with more than 46,000 vehicles in a 12-hour period. But that was down 12 per cent since 2019 and all the other top 10 junctions also saw a fall in vehicle numbers.

The biggest drop was a 22 per cent reduction at Tollcross, where the vehicle count fell from 27,374 in 2019 to 21,239 at the most recent count.

Transport convener Stephen Jenkinson welcomed the reductions, which averaged 12 per cent, but more work still needed to be done to improve the city’s key junctions.

He said: “There has been an overall reduction in traffic in Edinburgh because more people are using public transport and fewer people are using private vehicles.

“That has a knock-on effect not only across the city, but also a key pinch points like junctions, which is what these figures reflect.

“We still need to do more work on the city’s key junctions in terms of bus priority, traffic light sequencing and so on to make these junctions as effective as they can be, but the reduction in traffic volumes across the city will at least alleviate the problems with congestion.”

Here are the 10 busiest junctions in Edinburgh, ranked in order.

News you can trust since 1873
Follow us
© 2026 Iconic Media Group Ltd. All rights reserved.Cookie SettingsTerms and ConditionsPrivacy notice