Traffic jam analysis
More commuter traffic again: drivers in Munich are stuck in traffic jams for three days a year
A common sight: cars and trucks jam on the A9 near Munich
© Peter Kneffel / DPA
In 2020, Corona caused traffic to collapse, and commuters saved themselves a lot of time on the way to work. But in the current year, the breather is already over, as an analysis shows.
The corona break for commuters is over. Those who drive to work lose significantly more time in traffic jams. An analysis by the traffic data provider Inrix showed an extrapolated 40 hours of time lost for typical car commuters in the German cities in 2021. That is 14 hours more than in 2020, as the company announced on Tuesday. Last year, Corona slowed the flow of commuters, now traffic has increased again and the loss of time is almost as high as it was before the pandemic. In 2019 it was an average of 46 hours.
Places one to three: Munich, Berlin, Hamburg
By far the worst hit is car-driving commuters in Munich: extrapolated over the year, they lost an average of 79 hours due to traffic jams on the way to work – more than three days. However, that’s still seven hours less than before Corona. Berlin follows in second place with 65 hours. Only one hour is missing from the pre-crisis traffic jam.
From the third place, which Hamburg took with 47 hours, the gaps then become significantly smaller. Potsdam (46 hours), Pforzheim (44), Düsseldorf (43), Cologne (42) as well as Nuremberg, Dresden and Münster follow in fourth to tenth place, each with a loss of 41 hours. Some cities show massive increases even in the pre-Corona period. In Potsdam and Dresden it is almost a third – according to Inrix, the plus in both cities is due, among other things, to larger construction sites.
In an international comparison, however, German drivers get away with it quite lightly: Inrix calculated a time loss of 148 hours – more than six days for the traffic jam capital, London. This is followed by Paris with 140 and Brussels with 134 hours. According to the study, traffic jams have worsened again, particularly in Europe. In the USA, on the other hand, traffic remained significantly more fluid compared to 2019.
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Traffic expert: “Cities only partially comparable”
Inrix sells traffic analysis and services for connected cars to administrations and companies. The bigger the congestion problem appears, the better its business prospects are. The company isn’t the only one publishing studies on the subject. In its summer traffic jam analysis, the ADAC recently identified a massive increase in traffic jams for traffic on motorways. An annual balance sheet from the traffic club for 2021 is not yet available – likewise with the map specialist TomTom, which published deviating rankings more often in the past.
Traffic experts see such rankings with mixed feelings: Justin Geistefeldt, Professor of Transportation at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, finds the current traffic jam rankings basically “somewhat problematic” because they do not sufficiently take into account the particularities of the individual cities. “The topography, the transport network structure and, above all, the commuter networks in the cities under review are only comparable to a limited extent,” he says. Nevertheless, the studies provided certain indications. “There is hardly a better database to evaluate the traffic jam.”