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Traffic jams in rush hour traffic: daily routine for millions of German commuters
Photo: Sabine Gudath / imago images
Most commuters in Germany drive to work.
According to their own statements, two thirds drove their car to the company or the office in the past year - even on shorter journeys.
On the other hand, just over 13 percent use local public transport such as buses, trams, underground trains or trains on their way to work.
Even fewer people get on their bikes: only every tenth employed person regularly cycles to work, and very few commuters go on foot.
This was the result of the commuter survey carried out every four years by the Federal Statistical Office.
The corona pandemic or the debate about climate protection also had little influence on the driving behavior of commuters: Compared to the last survey for 2016, the percentages of the individual modes of transport are almost unchanged.
Many people not only use the car on long journeys, for example in the country.
The car is also regularly used on shorter commutes: according to the survey, almost half of all commutes are less than ten kilometers long.
For around a third, the commute to work is up to 25 kilometers and only 14 percent cover 25 to less than 50 kilometers.
According to the Federal Office, the figures for 2020 relate to a good 38.9 million of the total of 41.6 million people in employment in Germany.
For the survey, they provided information on the distance from home to work as well as on the time required and means of transport to get to work.
More and more commuters, more and more cars
The Federal Statistical Office speaks of an "unbroken dominance of the car" as a means of transport.
This is also shown by the number of new registrations: at the beginning of January 2021, 48.2 million cars were registered in Germany.
That was 14 million more than ten years earlier.
Overall, the number of cars per household is increasing: the trend is towards second or third cars.
According to the Federal Office, there were 102 cars for every 100 households in 2010, ten years later there were 108.
This also explains the leading role of the car as a whole: Germans cover around 84 percent of (motorized) passenger traffic by car - only 9 percent by train and 6 percent by bus.
The distances between home and work have also been longer for years.
Around 13 million people commute between different counties.
Around 3.4 million live and work in different federal states, 1.3 million more than two decades ago.
This was shown by figures from the Federal Employment Agency, which the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag evaluated in June.
The capital region has the highest density of commuters in Germany.
225,000 Brandenburgers have their official job in Berlin.
sug / dpa
