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Traffic jam in Berlin: In summer 2020, traffic in Germany almost returned to its pre-crisis level
Photo: Sven Braun / dpa
The corona pandemic has few positive sides.
One of them is that the traffic has decreased: Both the environment and the motorists have benefited from significantly emptier streets in the past twelve months.
A recent traffic jam study shows this quite clearly.
Germany's drivers were stuck in traffic jams for just 26 hours in 2020, according to an analysis by traffic data provider Inrix published on Tuesday.
In the previous year it was almost twice as many at 46 hours.
Possible reasons: more home office, closed shops, fewer leisure opportunities.
Düsseldorf is experiencing the greatest change
The front runner in nerve-wracking traffic is still Munich, where drivers lost an average of 65 hours due to congested roads despite the corona lows.
After all: in 2019 it was still 87 hours.
In second and third place in the domestic German comparison, Berlin and Nuremberg follow with 46 and 35 hours lost due to traffic jams.
The biggest change was brought about by the corona year in Düsseldorf: While the Rhine city was still in third place with 50 hours in 2019, the time in traffic jams fell by almost half to an average of 27 hours.
Internationally, Bucharest is in first place in the traffic ranking with 134 hours, closely followed by last year's »winner«, the Colombian capital Bogota (133 hours).
This is followed by New York (100 hours), Moscow (100 hours) and Philadelphia (94 hours).
Lockdown light brings traffic decrease light
According to Inrix, the lower volume of traffic also saved motorists money: In all of Germany, the corona-related restrictions would have resulted in savings of around 173 euros per capita.
It is noticeable that people apparently took the first lockdown more seriously than the second: In April 2020, the first full month with the Corona shutdown, the volume of traffic fell rapidly.
According to the analysis, journeys to the city centers in particular have been reduced by up to two thirds in some cities.
During the summer - when it briefly seemed as if the worst Corona phase was over - the traffic approached the pre-crisis level again.
In Munich, it even reached the February level in September 2020.
In the second lockdown, which has been in force since November, the volume of traffic fell less sharply.
Nevertheless, trips to German city centers in February 2021 were around 40 percent below the previous year's level.
According to TomTom, Berlin was the traffic jam capital in 2020
Inrix creates its traffic analyzes according to its own information on the basis of anonymous data from networked vehicles, mobile devices, navigation devices, fleet vehicles, the road and workshop infrastructure as well as publicly available information about faults.
The time lost in a traffic jam was determined in comparison to the journey time on a clear road.
The company sells traffic analysis and services for connected cars to administrations and companies.
Other companies use different methods and sometimes get different results.
According to the map provider TomTom, Berlin was Germany's traffic jam capital in 2020.
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