London Crowned Most Congested City in the UK, Fifth Globally
Listen up motorcycle riders, these are the most congested cities for commuters in the UK if you’re planning a city trip…
London has been crowned, unwantedly, as the most congested city for road users in the UK, with Bristol and Leeds rounding out the top three ahead of Manchester, while the Nation’s capital also ranks fifth globally.
A new study from Transportation Analytics firm, INRIX, has detailed just how much time has been spent stuck in traffic throughout 2024, and the numbers make for bad reading. London’s road users lost a total of 101 hours stuck queuing in traffic, which was a 2 per cent increase over the previous year.
London also counted towards approximately 50 per cent of the traffic delay across the entire UK! Sheesh! INRIX has stated that the delays in London across 2024 cost the city £3.85 billion which comes to an average of £942 per road user.
On a nationwide spectrum, the figures across the entire UK also don’t make for the prettiest of reading, as the country is estimated to have lost £7.7 billion in delays - that’s £200 million more than 2023.
The average UK driver lost around 62 hours due to congested roads which was up by one hour over the previous 12 months. This equates to £581 per driver. As motorcycle riders we have the benefit of filtering in most instances and avoiding such issues, but that’s not possible everywhere or in every situation and can lead to the same problems.
Behind Manchester in fourth on the most congested cities in the UK list, comes Bath, Birmingham, Wigan, Chelmsford and Sheffield, all of which lost over 50 hours in traffic time in 2024. The worst city for traffic congestion in the UK, London also ranks top of the list when it comes to Europe, while Dublin is third on the list.
In terms of a global scale, London sits fifth behind Mexico City and ahead of Paris, while the worst traffic congestion in the world takes place in… *drum roll* Istanbul, Turkey.
Transportation analyst and author of the report, Bob Pishue, said: “While the UK did see a slight increase in congestion again this year, overall congestion has remained steady.
“Roadworks in key corridors such as M25 Wisely Interchange caused considerable traffic on a main artery into the capital. Interestingly it was cities outside of the capital that saw the greatest increase in congestion with Manchester seeing a large increase, up 13 per cent.
“While London only had a modest increase in time lost, it still represented half of the entire country’s delay. Bristol and Leeds both moved up a spot while Birmingham and Wigan fell. Sheffield and Edinburgh were added to the top 10 list this year, as delays grew to 53 hours lost per driver in both places.
“Manchester has continued its rise to the 4th ranked spot in the country, after moving from 11th to 8th from 2022-2023, and from 8th to 4th in 2024.”
Find all the latest motorcycle news on Visordown.com
After graduating with a sports journalism degree, Robert joined Crash.net to lead the WorldSBK coverage in 2021, while also providing MotoGP coverage. Fulfilling that role for over three years, Robert was able to put his knowledge about all things racing to the test.
