B’luru traffic beats Kol’s on speed in photo finish but city roads safer
Times of India | 13 January 2025
Kolkata: Bengaluru traffic beat Kolkata's in average speed by a sliver in 2024, but thanks to the eastern metropolis's slower traffic — the most sluggish of all big Indian cities and the second slowest in the world — it was also most likely the safest.
The speed statistic is from the 14th edition of the TomTom Traffic Index, an annual report on 2024 released by TomTom, a Netherlands-based location technology specialist; the road safety data was extrapolated from the Traffic Review of Kolkata Police, which collated data from 2023.
It took, on an average, 34 minutes and 33 seconds to cover 10km in Kolkata last year, whereas the corresponding time in Bengaluru was 34 minutes and 10 seconds, the Netherlands study found. Counter-intuitively, the study also found that Kolkata was less congested — at 32% — than Karnataka's capital, which had a 38% congestion level. Kolkata was placed 169th on the list of the world's most congested cities; Bengaluru was 64th.
Kolkata had India's slowest traffic, the study claims. Globally, only Barranquilla in Colombia (36 minutes, 6 seconds to cover 10km) was worse.
But Kolkata's slowness most likely makes it the safest. According to the Traffic Review of Kolkata Police in 2023, there were 159 road fatalities and 1,754 injuries on city roads that year, the least in India.
"Our priority is safety over speed," said a transport department official, adding the department "was happy with being slow, if that makes us safest among metros." TOI had reported that the transport department had further reduced speed limits on different urban and rural roads, including those of Kolkata, to enhance road safety.
The TomTom Traffic Index utilises "floating car data" collected from various sources to enhance traffic services. For this new edition, TomTom analysed a representative sample covering 458 billion miles driven in 2024, allowing for an observation of how traffic patterns changed in cities worldwide.
The 2024 edition features 500 cities across 62 countries on six continents.
In 2024, 379 cities out of 500 (76%) saw their overall average speed decrease over the previous year. Despite this decrease, average speeds under optimal conditions, characterised by free-flowing traffic, remained stable and even showed slight improvements in most cities.