Slow Progress: Londoners Lose More Than 4 Days A Year In Traffic
04/03/2025 09:59 Share
Slow Progress: Londoners Lose More Than 4 Days A Year In Traffic
London has been named as having the fifth lowest average speed on its roads of any city in the world last year, while commuters spent on average four-and-a-half days sat in rush-hour traffic in 2024.
It’s not all bad news though, London’s fifth-worst positioning in fact represents a step in the right direction after it was ranked as having the slowest average speed of any city in the world for two years in a row.
The figures come as part of TomTom’s Global Traffic Index Ranking for 2024, which measures the congestion and average travel time across 500 cities around the world.
After crunching the data, the Colombian city of Barranquilla dislodged London’s ignominious positioning, though it will still come as little comfort to those who spend their days crawling through the maze that is the UK’s capital city.
Interestingly, however, such slow progress isn’t the result of London being abnormally busy compared with other cities, despite its estimated population of 9.7 million people.
Indeed, London ranks poorly for what TomTom calls ‘Static Factors’, essentially the result of city infrastructure, the design of the roads, traffic light synchronising, speed limits and pedestrian zones.
It is for this reason that data reveals it takes commuters 32mins 8secs on average to cover six miles (9.7km), a speed of just 11.2mph.
And yet, London is ranked as only the 150th most congested city in the world. This takes into account ‘Dynamic Factors’ such as traffic flow, incidents, bottlenecks and anything that can actively hamper progress on a daily basis.
In all, there were 109 hours lost to rush-hour traffic in London last year, or around four-and-a-half days.
By contrast, the Irish capital Dublin and Lima in Peru sacrificed more time to traffic, a total of 150 hours, or more than six days of the year.
Hull Is The UK’s Most Congested City
The expansive data by TomTom incorporates 500 of the world’s cities, ranging from large metropolitan areas of more than eight million in population and smaller locations inhabited by hundreds of thousands.
Beyond London, other UK cities offered more encouraging results for data of how long it takes to cover six miles.
Edinburgh was the next ‘slowest’ performer, ranking 58th of 500 with an average time to cover six miles of 27mins 24secs, worse than Sao Paulo, Milan and even Tokyo.
This was followed by Liverpool in 94th (25mins 15secs), Leicester in 99th (24mins 52secs) and Manchester in 100th (24mins 46secs).
In terms of outright traffic (dynamic factors), the most congested city in the UK was Hull, which was placed a lofty 12th worst on the international index. It is followed closely by Belfast in 15th, while Edinburgh is 49th, Leicester 51st and Sheffield 56th.
On the flip side, there are cities in the UK that prove quick and easy to drive through by comparison.
Middlesborough is the 23rd ‘fastest’ city in the world – and fourth in Europe - requiring just 10mins 35secs to cover a full six miles, Meanwhile, Ipswich in Suffolk places 82nd (13mins 17secs) and Oxford 125th (14mins 51secs).
The least congested UK city in terms of dynamic factors is Newcastle-Sunderland, albeit down in 83rd on the global index (20th in Europe).
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