London ranked as world’s slowest city for drivers due to capital’s widespread 20mph speed limits
10 January 2024, 10:15 | Updated: 10 January 2024, 10:22
London is the world’s slowest city for drivers due to widespread 20mph speed limits, according to a new study.
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It is the second year in a row the capital has been ranked as the world’s slowest city.
Journeys of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) in central London took an average of 37 minutes and 20 seconds last year, technology company TomTom said.
This was up by one minute compared to 2022 and was the longest time recorded among 387 cities across the 55 countries analysed.
TomTom based its analysis on journeys carried out within 5km of city centres.
It comes after Transport for London lowered speed limits to 20mph on an additional 65km of roads in the south of the capital in the final four months of last year.
However, a spokesperson for the mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said the study is “misleading”.
Ranked second was Dublin, with 10-kilometre trips taking an average of 29 minutes and 30 seconds.
Toronto, Milan and Lima were also among the top five cities named.
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In the UK, Manchester held the second spot (23 minutes and 30 seconds), followed by Liverpool (22 minutes and 50 seconds) and Bristol (22 minutes and 40 seconds).
Stephanie Leonard, TomTom’s head of government and regulatory affairs, said: “London really is the slowest place in the world to drive a car.
“Especially in the core city centre, you don’t have maximum speed limits of 50mph or higher, it’s a maximum of 20mph.
“You don’t have the infrastructure for driving very quickly.”
However, Mr Khan’s spokesperson said: “This study is misleading as it only includes analysis from a very small part of the city centre, not the whole of London.
"Roadworks are the biggest cause of congestion in cities, which is why the mayor's infrastructure co-ordination service is working with boroughs and utility companies to reduce delays caused by roadworks, helping to save London road users over 1,250 days of roadworks since 2019.”
While TfL’s director of network management and resilience Carl Eddleston said: “We disagree with this analysis of road speeds and believe it is not representative of London as a whole.
"This report only looks at data collected up to 5km from the centre, regardless of the city's overall size and density, which means that fair comparisons with other cities cannot be made."
The 20mph limit in the capital has drawn widespread criticism from London drivers, who have described it as a “war on motorists”.
Ian Taylor, a director at the Alliance of British Drivers, previously said: “The war on motorists, which politicians keep promising to end, is in fact intensifying.
“There may be a few places with 20mph justified, such as outside schools, not A-roads, but the Mayor of London seems determined, bit by bit, to turn virtually the whole place into 20mph maximum areas.”
In October last year, the government published a Plan for Drivers - which included an intention to curb the use of such limits.
The plan said: “We will make it clear that 20mph speed limits in England must be used appropriately where people want them – not as unwarranted blanket measures.”
It came after Wales also became the first country in the UK to drop the default speed limit to 20mph on residential roads.
