Motorway traffic More and longer traffic jams around Bonn again
Bonn · According to commuters, motorway traffic jams during rush hour around Bonn have recently increased significantly. It was particularly busy last week. The ADAC confirms this and provides some figures.
More traffic, more jams, more time lost: anyone who has been on the motorways in the past few days and last week has felt that they needed more patience than in the weeks before. Often things were moving slowly around Bonn, especially in rush hour and evening traffic. That this is not just a feeling is now confirmed by the General German Automobile Club (ADAC).
The number of traffic jam reports as well as the length of traffic jams has recently increased in North Rhine-Westphalia, the increase was particularly marked last week. "Last week we returned to the level of the pre-Corona period," says Thomas Müther, head of communications at ADAC. The ADAC counted 4511 reports of traffic jams in NRW between 31 August and 6 September, the length of the traffic jams was 6256 kilometres. By way of comparison, in the three weeks following the summer holidays, the ADAC recorded 3631, 3899 and 3536 traffic jam reports per week, with congestion lengths of 4499, 4837 and 4481 kilometres.
The ADAC's evaluation provides values for the entire federal state, not specifically for the region around Bonn. But: "The trend can also be applied to the Bonn area," explains Müther.
As many traffic jams as at the beginning of March
The values from the first week of September were last so high at the beginning of March. In the week from 2 to 8 March, the ADAC recorded 4244 traffic jams and 6503 kilometres. Afterwards, traffic decreased due to the restrictions imposed by the measures against the spread of the coronavirus. At the end of March and the beginning of April, the ADAC recorded only about 800 traffic jams and a length of about 570 kilometres per week.
Since the end of April, the number of reports of traffic jams has been slowly increasing again. "As early as June, traffic on the motorways in NRW had already settled back at 80 to 90 percent of the volume before the corona crisis," says Müther. However, the length of traffic jams was still considerably less. "The missing ten percent, however, ensured that the traffic jams were shorter than usual for a long time despite the increasing number," explains the spokesman.
Now the length of the traffic jams has also returned to the level of seven months ago. It is unclear whether the figures will continue to rise. "We will now observe whether this was an outlier or whether this trend will consolidate in the coming weeks," says Müther. Drivers on the motorways will be the first to feel it.
(Original text: Alexander Hertel / Translation: Mareike Graepel)
