Bengaluru city ranked second slowest to drive in the world after London: Study

A report by specialist in geolocation technologies, TomTom revealed that Bengaluru is the second slowest to drive through in the world in 2022, with about half an hour of travel time by road to cover 10 km.

In its research, that was released on Wednesday (February 15), TomTom stated that it took 29 minutes and 9 seconds to travel 10km in Bengaluru city centre last year. London ranks first with an average of 36 minutes and 20 seconds to travel 6.2 miles (10 km) in the centre of the capital city in 2022.

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According to the study, Dublin, which is Ireland's capital, the Japanese town of Sapporo and Milan in Italy, rank third, fourth and fifth respectively.

The 12th edition of its annual TomTom Traffic Index, details traffic trends across 389 cities in 56 countries, throughout 2022. TomTom has assessed traffic in each city and the cost of driving in terms of time, money as well as the environmental impact for a driven mile.

It can be seen that the study also took the time, cost and CO2 emission per mile driven into account, and simulating how long it took to complete a 10km (or 6-mile) trip within a city, for typical EV, petrol and diesel cars.

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The study also found that Bengaluru ranks fourth in the number of hours lost, 129 hours, due to rush-hour traffic. Even with flexible working arrangements, option to work remotely, the time people lost in global cities to rush-hour traffic only increased over the past year.

The research also said that the cost of traffic jams on the driver's wallet if also quite significant. While London topped the list with the highest CO2 emissions per driven mile during rush hour, Bengaluru ranked fifth.

According to Professor Ashish Verma, a mobility expert from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru has been consistently in the top five and the report is not something unexpected.

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"Bengaluru is definitely among the worst congested cities because of misplaced infrastructure planning and transport interventions in the name of solving traffic problems without getting any results. However, I don't think we should really give too much importance to the relative ranking," Prof Verma said.

Prof. MN Sreehari, the advisor to the Government of Karnataka for traffic, transportation and infrastructure and Chairman, Indian Smart Cities Development Organization for infrastructure, said that more than the time lost, the total loss in the revenue is much more horrifying in Bengaluru.

Meanwhile, civic activist and convenor of Citizens' Agenda for Bengaluru, Sandeep Anirudhan, noted that the congestion rankings put out by Tomtom or Inrix, are fundamentally flawed in their methodology.

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"In London itself, more than 20 percent of street surfaces are devoted to cycling tracks, and they are said to account for 70-80 percent of traffic during peak hours. That with an excellent mix of multi-modal transport such as the underground, suburban, buses, waterways, cabs, etc., ensures that the majority are getting by quicker in London, while the idiots in cars are stuck in traffic," Anirudhan said.

"In Bengaluru, it's the other way around. We have almost negligible public transport. We have a nascent metro system, no suburban rail, a pathetic bus network, no cycling lanes, no first/last mile connect, ensuring that a majority of the population uses private vehicles, choking the roads. Here, everyone is responsible for the choking," Anirudhan said.