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Any Londoner who either drives or is driven around the city will tell you that it ain’t the quickest way of getting about. If you’re looking to get somewhere on a deadline in this town, going by road is a pretty risky option.
And the slowness of London’s roads appears to have just been confirmed – yet again – by a new study. Mapping technology company TomTom found that in central London a journey of ten kilometres took an average of 37 minutes and 20 seconds in 2023 – making it the slowest city in the entire world.
If you’re getting a bit of déjà vu, that’s understandable. This is after all the second year in a row that London has been named the world’s slowest city (check out last year’s ranking here). We’re getting worse, too: London’s average ten-kilometre journey time is now an entire minute longer than it was in 2023’s study.
Londoners apparently waste an average of 148 hours per year in traffic – but, interestingly, it isn’t the most congested city on the planet. London’s congestion level (45 percent) is apparently lower than the world’s second-slowest city, Dublin (66 percent).
TomTom noted that London’s 20mph speed limits were the main cause for its snail’s pace.
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London, meanwhile, reportedly called the study ‘misleading’, saying that it ‘only includes analysis from a very small part of the city centre, not the whole of London.
‘Comprehensive TfL data suggests that journey times on the TfL road network actually remain at similar levels to those in 2019, while analysis from around the UK suggests that lower speed limits have not increased congestion.’
You can read up more on TomTom’s ‘Traffic Index’ here. Don’t fancy getting snarled up in traffic? This city is easily navigable by public transport – well, when those services aren’t on strike, that is.
Did you see that London has been named Europe’s best destination to visit this year?
Plus: you can get massively discounted tickets for London Zoo this week.
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