Belgium has never been so congested as in 2018

Belgium has never been so congested as in 2018
Amongst other aspects, Lorenzo Stefani of Touring Mobilis is concerned about increased congestion at off-peak times of the day.

The average Belgian has never spent so much time in traffic jams. The information is shown in the traffic queue barometer produced by Touring Mobilis, for the first six months of 2018, reported in La Dernière Heure on Wednesday.

In Belgium, the number of hours where the total length of traffic jams has exceeded 300 kilometres has almost doubled between 2017 and 2018. The figure has gone from 24.2 hours to 46.6 hours. The difference is even greater for queues in excess of between 350 and 400 kilometres.

Lorenzo Stefani, the Public Relations Manager and Spokesperson for Touring analyses the situation thus, “Times when the traffic experiences more than 100 kilometres of congestion across the Belgian network have become more frequent”, up by 24.7% on 2017. He goes on, “We may speak here of an increase in structural congestion.”

He adds, “As opposed to 2017, there is a striking increase in 2018, especially in the day during slack periods", whilst commuters are looking to go to work outside of peak times when the network is heavily congested.

Lorenzo Stefani concludes by saying, “The situation is getting worse and worse. Especially for those who have no other alternative than to take the car. They are sharing the roads with those who could use alternative means of transport, but are still not doing so.”

It is worth noting that the barometer only takes account of queue lengths where the speeds recorded are lower than 50 kph.


The Brussels Times


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