It’s official. When it comes to going nowhere fast, London is the UK’s slowest place to travel. It’s followed by Edinburgh, Manchester, Leicester and Liverpool.
That’s according to satnav company, TomTom’s annual congestion report. Drivers in London waste, on average, 136 hours a year sitting in traffic. That’s north of five days. A 6-mile journey in London regularly takes 35 minutes at an average speed of 10 mph.
Maybe our glorious capital city should take some advice from Leeds in West Yorkshire, which, over the past year, actually achieved a reduction in congestion waiting times.
Clearly, once they’re away from our gridlocked cities, drivers are making up for lost time by putting the pedal to the metal. In some cases, a bit too strongly. The most recently published figures on speeding offences (for 2024) in the UK, show them shooting up by 10%. That’s around 2.5m drivers caught breaking national speed limits.
Commenting on the figures, Jack Couzens, the AA’s Head of Roads Policy suggested that a more obvious police presence might be the answer to bringing those figures down: “Their presence will act as a deterrent and help improve road safety. At the moment too many people think they can get away with it.”