London is world’s slowest city to drive

New Delhi:  London is the world’s slowest city for drivers owing to 20mph speed limits, a study suggests. A journey of 10km in central London took an average of 37 minutes and 20 seconds last year, location technology company TomTom said- making it the longest time among 387 cities in 55 countries which were analysed. This also marks the second year in a row that London tops the slowest city ranking. Top five slowest cities include Dublin, Toronto, Milan and Lima. In the UK itself, Manchester was ranked second, which was followed by Liverpool, Bristol, and Edinburgh.

The company TomTom 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.”London mayor Sadiq 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.”
Meanwhile, director of network management and resilience Carl Eddleston said as per BBC, “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.”

London published a ‘Plan for Drivers’ in October last year which stated, “We will make it clear that 20mph speed limits in England must be used appropriately where people want them – not as unwarranted blanket measures.”