Band 6+: You should spend about 20 minutes on this Task. The charts show (Chart a) the average speed of urban zone traffic (in kilometres per hour or kph) in a number of countries over a fifty year period, including a future estimate; and also (Chart b) the total number of urban zones per country (in thousands.) Write a report summarising the information. Select and describe the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The two charts give infromation about the the average speed of city traffic zones with projections of the future, and how many urban zones there were in total in nine different countries for the period from 1970 to 2020 . Overall, it can be clearly seen that all nations experienced considerable fluctuations of the rate of the speed throughout the given period. While there were countries that showed slight increase in the velocity, the majority underwent significant decline. Regarding the general number of urbanized ares, the overall trend is positive.

At the beginning of the period, countries’ speed ranged from 32 to 69 kph. These figures then grew in 1990 before showing even bigger insrease 30 years later. However, some of the countries, namely France, USA, and Brazil experienced slight or no changes. The growth is set to continue for Italy, Brazil, and Spain in 2020, but for the remaining states the trend is likely to be negative.

Chart B displays an overall upward trend from 1970 to 2020, with estimated dramatic increases in the urban areas of countries. However, Russia is likely to see a double drop in the zones with most cities.