Anyone who commutes by car every morning, for example on the Föhringer Ring to one of the media companies in Unterföhring or on the B 471 to Ismaning, should have taken note of the news that was disseminated at the beginning of the week rather boredly – and very likely at walking pace or even standing: Munich is once again Germany’s traffic jam capital. People here spend an average of 74 hours a year bumper to bumper in their cars.
But it is by no means the case that traffic behind the city limits suddenly starts to flow smoothly. “It’s not just the city. The entire metropolitan area of Munich is the traffic jam capital of Germany – and the pressure on the district is enormous,” says Markus Büchler. The traffic expert from the Greens parliamentary group experiences the traffic madness in his home town of Oberschleißheim every day. Up to 17,000 vehicles a day roll through town on the narrow B 471 north of the picturesque Schleißheim palace complex – and the traffic pressure continues to increase, which is mainly due to the dynamic economic development of the district and the associated growth in population. The district of Munich now has around 350,000 inhabitants, and it is expected to have more than 370,000 by 2040.
In the past, it was very easy to define where the residents of the district commuted to work: people from the area around the state capital drove to the city by car or S-Bahn in the morning and returned home to the country in the evening. In the meantime, however, this trend has completely reversed itself. Every day, more than 187,000 people commute to work in the district of Munich with its more than 250,000 jobs subject to social security contributions – the vast majority of them from the city of Munich. And only a little more than 93,000 people travel from the district of Munich to the state capital or neighboring districts to work. And they still use the car in large numbers.
There are regular traffic jams on the B 471, which runs parallel to the A 99.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
This becomes clear every morning and evening on the B 471 or the eastern bypass of the A 99 near Garching, Ismaning, Aschheim, Kirchheim or on the B 304 in the municipality of Haar. Well over 20,000 vehicles a day produce long convoys on the main road between Garching and Aschheim. On peak days, more than 160,000 vehicles are on the road on the A 99, which is chronically overloaded despite the ongoing expansion to eight lanes. Around 36,000 vehicles roll through Haar every day on three lanes in and out of town; At the border of the state capital, the main road will then be narrowed to just two lanes, which, together with the many crossing points, will also lead to a slowdown in the flow of traffic.
“We feel that the S-Bahn is on par with the 1972 Olympic Games”
“The commuter relationships have continued to grow. People travel from further afield to the state capital or to us in Ismaning, and of course more and more commuters are coming from the city to our community,” says Ismaning’s mayor Alexander Greulich (SPD), who repeats it like a mantra , the northern district of Munich is drowning in traffic. The fact that the B 471 is to be widened to four lanes and the eastern bypass of the A 99 is to be expanded is correct, says the Social Democrat, but it is only one building block in transport policy. From his point of view, what is needed to free Munich and the surrounding area from the title of the traffic jam capital is a “master plan” – and it must above all include the expansion of local public transport, especially the S-Bahn.
“We feel that the S-Bahn is on par with the 1972 Olympic Games,” says the Ismaninger town hall chief, who no longer trusts the S-Bahn network itself. “When I go into the city, I now take the bus to the U 6 and take the subway. It runs reliably.” The fact that “every second train is canceled,” as he says exaggeratedly, is “unacceptable,” especially on the all-important airport S-Bahn line. A fire letter from the district administrators in the Munich Transport and Tariff Association (MVV) to Deutsche Bahn last year has not been able to change that, in which the local politicians spoke of a visible extent of the failure of the Munich S-Bahn
The Greens traffic expert Büchler also criticizes the “unreliability” of the Munich S-Bahn, which was once the backbone of local public transport. Today, however, these are the subway and also the buses. Above all, the district has pushed ahead enormously with the expansion of the bus lines – most recently especially express bus routes – says Büchler. “But that’s not enough. The volume of traffic has increased overall, but the alternatives to the car are too weak,” says Oberschleißheimer, who, like Greulich, refers to the positive example of Vienna: “There is sensible urban planning there built a subway and then the residential areas.” In Germany, however, this is hardly possible because lengthy planning processes for large-scale projects and the still dominant benefit-cost ratio stand in the way of innovative measures that can be implemented quickly.
Ismaning’s town hall boss Greulich also criticizes Munich’s city politics, for which his party colleague Dieter Reiter is responsible as mayor. “The city – and I often say this to Mayor Reiter – must acknowledge that we are commuter communities,” says Greulich. “This applies above all to large construction projects in the city, such as in the north-east in Johanniskirchen.” Because in the northern municipalities of Ismaning, Aschheim and Unterföhring, there are great fears that the district of Munich will have to cope with the expected additional traffic volume due to residential development via the Föhringer Ring and the M 3 district road, which have already reached their capacity limit.
On the Föhringer Ring, which is constantly being expanded, there is a dense crowd with around 70,000 vehicles a day, especially during peak traffic times. Markus Büchler therefore finds that the further expansion of the road network is no longer up-to-date. “We have to be content with the roads we have,” says the transport politician for the Greens, “and we need alternatives such as the S-Bahn and cycle paths.”