Revealed: Britain's Most Congested Cities

05/03/2025 11:07

Revealed: Britain's Most Congested Cities

Hull has been named the most congested city in the United Kingdom, while it was revealed that Londoners spent almost five days in rush hour traffic last year.

The United Kingdom’s capital city was highlighted as one of the world’s slowest cities, requiring a full 33 minutes to cover a mere six-mile distance in a vehicle, a figure many taxi drivers might well relate to.

When traffic begins to build, however, it is Hull which emerges as the UK’s most congested city, placing 12th worst in the entire world. The least congested city in the UK last year, meanwhile, was Newcastle-Sunderland.

The figures come as part of TomTom’s annual Global Traffic Index findings, which measures the level of congestion and infrastructure challenges when driving across 500 cities around the world.

The study uses two metrics to produce its findings;

- Static Factors: The result of city infrastructure, the design of the roads, traffic light synchronising, speed limits and pedestrian zones
- Dynamic Factors: Traffic flow, incidents, bottlenecks and anything that can actively hamper progress on a daily basis

By measuring a combination of static and dynamic factors, TomTom can gauge which cities prompt the slowest progress over a six-mile distance on a regular basis.

As a result, London emerges the fifth ‘slowest city’ from the 500 surveyed, requiring an average of 33mins 17secs to drive six miles.

That said, this is an improvement on 2022 and 2023 when London was ranked as the slowest city of all the 500 cities studied. For 2024, it has been surpassed by Barranquilla in Colombia, which sees drivers take 34mins 51secs to cover the same distance.

In all, getting stuck in traffic during rush hour in London cost drivers 113 hours (around four-and-a-half days) last year, though drivers in the Irish capital Dublin and Lima in Peru were worse off, losing 150 hours (more than six days) to traffic.

London, Edinburgh & Liverpool Are The UK’s Slowest Cities

In all, five UK cities featured inside the top 100 of 500 when gauging the slowest rate of progress across six miles.

While not as lethargic as traversing London, it still requires a full 27mins 24secs to get across Edinburgh, while Liverpool requires 25mins 15secs of your time too. Leicester and Manchester were also singled out among the British contingent.

In terms of congestion outright, Hull is considered the UK’s worst, though Belfast, Edinburgh and Leicester are also considered worse than cities like Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Nairobi. In fact, 16 of the 35 UK cities studied feature inside the global top 100 for congestion - and they don't include London, surprisingly.

As for the cities that require the fewer precious minutes to cover six miles, Middlesborough comes out top in a leisurely 10mins 35secs – placing it 22nd on the global index – while Ipswich (13mins 17secs), Oxford (14mins 51secs), Newcastle-Sunderland (15mins 25secs) and Exeter (15mins 26secs) will also take up less of your time travelling.

Interestingly, though Oxford functions well when all is calm on the roads, when traffic does start to build it is in fact one of the worst cities in the world for congestion, placing 63rd.