London is the world's slowest city for drivers

You might need to be patient when driving in London. You might need to be patient when driving in London. Image: Shutterstock

London's city center is the slowest moving zone for cars, which cover just 14 km/h during rush hour, according to TomTom's Traffic Index 2022. In the UK capital, as in many other major cities, traffic jams are a source of increased fuel costs, but also of CO2 emissions.

London holds the record for the slowest city center speed. In 2022, it took just over 36 minutes to travel just 10 km. According to TomTom, the average speed in the UK capital is about 25km/h, but drops to just 14km/h during rush hour. After London, Bangalore (29'10") in India and Dublin (28'30") in Ireland have the slowest-moving journeys.

Traffic jams inevitably mean increased fuel consumption. With the rise in fuel prices, this translates into a worldwide average cost increase of 27% for gasoline cars and 44% for diesel cars. TomTom calculated that the average cost for 10,000 kilometers driven in Hong Kong was €1,986 for a gasoline car (+14% in one year) and €1,511 for a diesel (+22%).

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The other consequence of traffic jams is, of course, CO2 emissions, which also soar. TomTom estimates that a 20 km round trip from home to work in London produces 1,133 kg of CO2. This is followed by Paris (1,092 kg) and Manila (1,047 kg).

The Traffic Index TomTom 2022 covers 389 cities in 56 countries. The data comes from more than 600 million connected devices, starting with in-vehicle navigation systems and smartphones, using TomTom applications. In total, data from 58 billion hours of driving were collected.