Drivers Are Stuck In Traffic Jams For 46 Hours A Year

2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 05:39

The traffic jam situation on German roads has hardly improved. Drivers spent an average of 46 hours in traffic jams each year.

That was the result of a study published on Monday by the traffic data provider Inrix. The economic damage caused by these traffic jams amounts to 2.8 billion euros.

According to the study, drivers are worst hit in Munich. Those who drive to work there lost 87 hours last year. These are congestion costs of 774 euros per car driver. For the city, the cost is 405 million euros.

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Berlin in second place in the ranking

In the city of all places that will host the International Motor Show (IAA) in the future, traffic jams and slow-moving traffic cost commuters more than three and a half days a year. It is followed by Berlin with 66 hours and Düsseldorf with 50 hours. The time lost was determined in comparison to the duration of the journey on a clear road.

According to Inrix, there was an average time loss of 46 hours for commuters in the 74 German cities examined. Other heavily affected places in Germany include Hamburg with 48 hours lost, Stuttgart and Nuremberg with 42 hours each, Cologne with 41, Hanover with 40 and Bremen with 37 and Frankfurt am Main with 36 hours.

In an international comparison, German commuters get off relatively well: In Bogota in Colombia and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, the time lost adds up to 191 and 190 hours, respectively. The cities with the highest loss of time in Europe are Rome and Paris with 166 and 165 hours per year, respectively.

New methodology at Inrix

After a change in the methodology, the current congestion data differ massively from those that Inrix reported last year. Now that busy commuter routes to destinations outside the city centers are being used, the times for Berlin, for example, have been cut by more than half. The old methodology resulted in 154 hours for 2018, for 2019 only 66 hours were determined according to the new system.

In addition, other studies come to different results. In a list published at the end of January, the navigation device manufacturer TomTom sees Munich only in fourth place among the German cities most severely affected by traffic jams, behind Hamburg, Berlin and Wiesbaden. Globally, this list sees Bangalore in India and Manila in the Philippines as the most polluted cities.

The ADAC, in turn, regularly checks which federal states have the most traffic jams on the motorways. In 2019, North Rhine-Westphalia was again ahead as the most populous federal state. Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg followed.

Expert: stowage rankings problematic

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 characteristics of the individual cities. “What is being compared is often not easy to compare,” he says. Nevertheless, the studies provided certain indications. "There is hardly a better database to evaluate the traffic jam."

Inrix sells traffic analysis and services for connected cars to administrations and companies. The bigger the traffic jam problem appears, the better its business prospects are. (dpa)