Turns out London’s a world-class city – for traffic congestion

Think your commute’s taking longer or getting around London is harder and harder? Well, you’re right – and now there’s hard data to back it up. TomTom, a Dutch maps and navigation software company, ranks London as the 12th-most-congested city in North America and 142 in the world in its 2023 traffic index. Just four years ago, in 2019, London ranked 240th worldwide. Our Jonathan Juha reports.

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What do the numbers show about London’s traffic congestion?

TomTom says its index aims to rank cities based on their average travel time using floating car data, real-time traffic data collected from GPS-enabled vehicles or phone apps.

Here’s how London stacks up:

• The average travel time per 10 kilometers last year was 17 minutes and 20 seconds, about 40 seconds more than in 2022.
• The city also reported a congestion level (defined by TomTom as the average additional time, in percentage, lost to traffic) of 33 per cent, up from 2019’s 23 per cent.
• In total, Londoners also lost about 55 hours when commuting during rush hours, when the average city speed was 31 km/h.

North America’s Top 3 most-congested cities were Toronto (29 minutes per 10 kilometers), Mexico City (26:30) and New York (24:50).

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The other London topped the world ranking at 37 minutes and 20 seconds to go 10 kilometers.

What’s behind the increase in congestion and what does it mean?

The high ranking for the Forest City – by far the smallest of the Top 12 in North America – is quite “striking,” said Martin Horak, a political scientist with Western University‘s local government program.

“I think all of this reflects what people have been feeling and, ultimately, it reflects the fact that the city is not currently keeping up with the increase in travel demand that comes with having more population,” he said.

“We’ve become a fast-growing city in the last few years, but our transportation infrastructure hasn’t been growing fastand we’re starting to really feel the consequences.”

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London, already Ontario’s fastest-growing city between 2016 and 2021, is expected to grow by more than 50 per cent over the next 25 yearseffectively absorbing a city of the size of Windsor in that time and bringing the population for London and Middlesex County to nearly 880,000.

If those projections pan out, it’s no big leap to think London’s mobility issues could worsen, Horak said, unless the city, now developing a new transportation master plan, gets serious about investing in public transit.

While more bike lanes and routes, and smart light systems that adjust based on traffic volumes, can help, a fast, efficient transit system people can rely on will ultimately have the biggest impact on congestion, he said.

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“The most basic reason for that is that a well-used public transit system is way more efficient on space,” Horak said. “If you take a bus that is full of people, it takes up about seven times less road space than if you put all those people in cars, two to a car. So, a good transit system is way more space-efficient, and space is really what’s at most of a premium in cities.

“And I do think if we have a system that’s actually efficient and can get people where they need to go quickly, reliably and reasonably comfortably, then people are going to switch (from cars), and the system is going to lose its reputation or stigma.”

London’s most congested areas

According to city data, these were the most congested intersections in London from 2014-23, based on average annual daily traffic – areas you may want to avoid at rush hour:

1. Oxford Street West at Wonderland Road North: 73,540 vehicles
2. Commissioners Road East at Wellington Road South: 71,633 vehicles
3. Highbury Avenue North at Oxford Street East: 67,806 vehicles
4. Southdale Road East at Wellington Road South: 65,706 vehicles
5. Fanshawe Park Road West at Richmond Street: 65,382 vehicles.

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