London is full of iconic landmarks, and if you opt to ride a bus there, chances are that you'll have plenty of time to sightsee -- even if you're not on a tour bus. Statistics from the British capital show that some city buses in central London travel at just 3.8 mph (6.1 km/h) on average, putting them behind the pace of Victorian travel by horse-drawn carriage. Traffic is so bad, in fact, that the average London driver sits idle for more than 100 hours every year, or the equivalent of 12 work days. The findings come from the traffic information firm Inrix, which called London the most congested area of the United Kingdom. And things only appear to be getting worse. A 5-mile (8-km) car trip in the most congested part of the city that took 20 minutes in 2012 increased to 25 minutes in 2016. One reason for the traffic increase has to do with online shopping, filling the streets with delivery vans and other vehicles making sure shoppers get their goods on time.
A look inside London:
- The approximately 8 million residents of London speak a total of more than 300 languages.
- The London Underground, or "The Tube," is the world's oldest underground railway, but more than half of it is not underground.
- London is the only city to have hosted the Olympics three times: in 1908, 1948, and 2012.