According to new research, Bengaluru is the second-slowest city to drive in. According to TomTom, a Dutch multinational developer of location technology, one can travel 10 kilometres in the southern city in 29 minutes and 10 seconds.
London is the world’s slowest city to drive in, with people taking 36 minutes and 20 seconds to travel 10 kilometres – the longest time for a journey of that distance out of 389 cities in 56 countries surveyed in 2022.
“Analysis of the cost of driving, based on the price of petrol, diesel, and charging an electric vehicle (EV), and taking into account the impact of congestion on fuel consumption, found that London was also the world’s second most expensive city to drive in last year, behind Hong Kong,” the BBC reported.
In the third and fourth positions are Dublin, Ireland, at 28 minutes and 30 seconds, and Sapporo, Japan, at 27 minutes and 40 seconds.
A specialist in geolocation technologies, TomTom released the 12th edition of its annual traffic index Tuesday. According to the study, Bengaluru was ranked fourth in cities where traffic alone accounted for lost time. Bengaluru lost 129 hours in 2022 for a round trip (of six miles each) driven during rush hour. Dublin topped this table, with Bucharest and London coming in second and third.
The Karnataka capital is fifth in the table – “Cities with the highest CO2 emissions per driven miles at rush hour”.
For petrol cars, the average annual CO2 emissions in Bengaluru are 974 kgs based on a six-mile round trip. In that order, London, Paris, Manila, and Bucharest are higher than Bengaluru. According to the study, the average cost of driving a typical petrol car increased by 27% in 2022 compared to 2021.
2022 also saw an increase in energy prices due to several factors — disrupted supply chains, bad weather, lower investments, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine — which greatly exacerbated the situation, the study says. With more and more people going back to work, congestion increased fuel consumption as well.
Drivers around the world spent 27% more on average to fill up their petrol tanks than in 2021, while those driving diesel cars shelled out 48% more in 2022 than the year before, the study says. Hong Kong became the costliest city to drive in, with more than US$1000 ($1023) spent by a driver commuting every day at rush hour.