Study finds Lewisham is most stressful borough for commuting in London

By Hermia Rhodes

A new study found that Lewisham is the most stressful borough to travel in London. 

This study, performed by Resume.io, used the percentage of transport-related negative tweets in a borough to find which commute was the most stressful.

Using a sentiment analysis tool called TensiStrength, they analysed Twitter data to find which areas caused most anxiety to travel through.

Through this they found that six of the 10 most stressful London boroughs are in South London, Lewisham being the most stressed with 42.54 per cent of tweets about commuting in the borough being negative.

According to the study, this is thought to be due to the rail service being among the least reliable, as well as funding problems in TfL meaning that plans to extend the Bakerloo line to Lewisham have been shelved.

The other stressful boroughs in South London are Bromley, Croydon, Sutton, Kingston Upon Thames and Greenwich.

This is thought to be due to business: a London City Airport report shows that one in three commuters in the peak rail hour have to stand up – and only a fraction of the Underground’s 272 Tube stations are in South London.

The least stressful South London borough is Bexley, which ranks as the second least stressful London borough to travel in, with 30.33 per cent of tweets in the borough being negative.

According to the study, residents of London now have some of the longest commutes in the UK, almost an hour longer than a decade ago, and London ranked 11th in stressful commutes in the country.

People often take cars instead of rail or bus to avoid the stress, and in 2021 London became the most congested city in the world.

Pictured top: Lewisham railway station (Picture: mattbuck)