Revealed: the best and worst places to commute by car

Newspress

Fed up with sitting in traffic on your rush hour commute? Then consider a move to Peterborough – where a survey has found the average commute is faster than any other city in the UK.

Direct Line Drive Plus found that the average speed in Peterborough’s rush hour is 19.3mph – that’s almost double that of Westminster’s 10.06mph.

London's mayor, Boris Johnson, will be disappointed to find that despite measures such as congestion charging to reduce traffic in peak times, Westminster is the slowest city in the survey.

The average speeds were found using data from black box devices that recorded over 20 million miles. They’re fitted as part of Direct Line’s Drive Plus insurance policies, allowing drivers to monitor their driving and spot driving patterns.

The average 30-minute commute is delayed by 5.95 minutes in rush hour

The research discovered that the average 30-minute commute is delayed by 5.95 minutes in rush hour compared to the same journey outside peak hours.

However, rush hour in Canterbury adds 9.7 minutes to the average half-hour journey, while in St Albans the delay is 8.9 minutes and in Worcester it’s 8.6 minutes.

While Peterborough has the highest average rush hour speed at 19.3mph, York commuters average 17.6mph and Oxford manages 17.2mph.
 

Meanwhile, the slowest cities after Westminster are Lancaster (10.9mph) and Cambridge (11.3mph).

Direct Line’s head of telematics, Paul Felton, explained:

“This analysis shows the real experiences of motorists across the country on their commuting journeys. By enabling drivers to easily keep track of their own journeys, telematics can assist motorists in making travelling as stress-free as possible by providing feedback on individual journeys, including the time and length of their journey and their acceleration, braking and overall smoothness.”

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By Andrew Brady, Motoring Research