Although traffic in 2021 never reached the level of 2019 — before the corona pandemic — car and especially freight traffic was added, certainly from March. The growth of car traffic remained limited, but freight traffic boomed: there is now more freight traffic than ever before. The Flemish Traffic Center reports this in its annual report on Wednesday. The evening rush hour on the Flemish highways was also much heavier in 2021 than the morning rush hour.
Traffic was not yet fully back in the second corona year, there was still less traffic in 2021. While in 2019 the average morning rush hour had 155 km of traffic jams and 119 km in the evening, in 2021 both rush hours were clearly evenly matched: 86 km of morning traffic jam and 88 km of evening traffic jam.
“If we look at the congestion severity — that is the product of the traffic jam length and the duration — the figures in both the morning and the evening were higher than in 2020. Remarkable: the morning traffic jams became 27 percent heavier, the evening traffic jams no less than 61 percent. heavier. In the longer term, compared to 2012, we see a 23 percent decrease for the morning rush hour and a strong increase of 39 percent for the evening rush hour,” it reads.
October was good for nine out of ten days with the longest traffic jams. Many corona measures were relaxed in the autumn. The fact that there were heavy evening peaks at the time with many accidents caused traffic congestion in September and October to peak above the pre-pandemic level.
The impact of corona on traffic varied depending on the highway and the time of day. For example, the morning and evening rush hours on the Antwerp inner ring R1 became a lot heavier in 2021. The place where the traffic jams lasted longest on the Antwerp highways has shifted from Antwerp East to the Kennedytunnel during corona years, partly due to nuisance at the neighboring Oosterweelwerf.
In Ghent, the length of traffic jams on the E17 between Kortrijk and Antwerp increased due to renovation work on the Gentbrugge viaduct.
The most congested areas were on highways where traffic had to slow down for construction sites, although the busiest road segment traditionally remained the zone between Berchem and Antwerp-East on the R1: good for 125,000 cars and trucks per working day. That is 14,000 fewer than before corona.
The most saturated highway zones were the southern part of the Antwerp Ring R1, the northern part of the Brussels Ring R0 and the E313 between Antwerp and Wommelgem.
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