Auckland's roads may be notorious for peak-hour congestion, but Wellington drivers actually slow to a crawl more often, a study has found.
Research by GPS navigation company TomTom shows Wellington drivers experience an average of 9480 stop-starts in traffic each year.
That is 120 more than Auckland drivers, who experiencean average of 9360 a year, or 1.2 per cent fewer than drivers in the capital.
The study, carried out for lubricant company Castrol, used information from TomTom's satellite navigation systems on vehicles in 50 cities worldwide.
It found drivers in both Auckland and Wellington faced fewer stop-starts than many large cities overseas, including Beijing (28,200, or 201 per cent more than Auckland), New York (15,480, or 65 per cent more) and Sydney (13,200, or 41 per cent more).
Rush hour traffic heads out of Auckland City towards the North Shore. Photo / Dean Purcell
But surprisingly, drivers in both New Zealand cities faced more stop-starts than those in several larger cities - including Los Angeles (9000, or 3 per cent fewer than Auckland), Melbourne and Cape Town (8760, or 6 per cent fewer) and Toronto (8520, or 9 per cent fewer)
The worst city for stop-starts was Istanbul, Turkey, which had an average of 31,200 a year (233 per cent more than Auckland) while the best was Rotterdam, Netherlands, with an average of 6120 a year (35 per cent fewer than Auckland).
TomTom head of traffic Ralf-Peter Schafer said the results were fascinating.
