How mobile were people in the Corona year? Which mode of transport was the first choice? And what does that mean for the traffic turnaround? Mobility researcher Andreas Knie from the Social Science Research Center in Berlin draws a sobering conclusion: the car is more important than ever. Especially bein local and long-distance public transport knee sees great omissions that will reverberate for a long time. The sociologist notes that the innovation effects are zero. “The pandemic is like powdery mildew on us. It is difficult to be creative.”
ntv.de: Big jumps are not yet allowed, but the streets, the U-Bahn and S-Bahn – at least in Berlin – are full. Are we as mobile again in everyday life as we were before the pandemic?
Andreas Knie: The impression in the big city is deceptive. Mobility is nowhere near as it was before the pandemic. But it is correct: there is more movement again. The partial lockdown from autumn is different. The total lockdown in the spring was much more massive because shops, businesses, universities and schools were closed. In this phase around two thirds of the employees were on short-time work or were working from home. In the partial lockdown it is now only a third. Conversely, that means: two thirds are moving, and of course you can see that too.
Subjective and objective perception often differ from one another. Can you put a figure on how immobile we have become during the tough lockdown phase?
At the beginning of the Corona restrictions, we had a very compact structure. In that time, our range of motion has shrunk by a third of our usual routes from before the pandemic.
And now?
As already mentioned, we will see an increase in the volume of traffic in the first quarter of 2021, but the movements of most business travelers, for example students and tourists, who were previously heavily reflected in the figures, are still missing. In addition, 20 percent of people are still permanently in the home office or on short-time work. That means we still have less work-related traffic. At the end of the quarter, we expect our mobility – including all means of transport: long-distance trains, domestic air traffic, railways and all car and travel-related trips – to be roughly a fifth below the level of 2019.
And what were the means of transport of choice last year?
Traffic performance per day according to means of transport
(Photo: Social Science Research Center Berlin – WZB)
In the first tough lockdown phase, we covered half of it with our feet and the bike. The rest by car. The car stayed at a high level the whole time. In the summer there was a very car-focused vacation planning. Much more people than before went on vacation by car. The number of car journeys has nearly exploded. The German coast and the mountains were full of cars because people told themselves I wouldn’t fly.
The Deutsche Bahn was obviously not an alternative …
No. In 2020 we had neither significant air nor long-distance traffic. The long-distance railway had only a fifth of its original traffic volume. The mobility losers in the pandemic are clearly trains, airplanes and local public transport. Here the numbers of tourist and business trips collapsed catastrophically.
Is this the beginning of a new mobility era?
What I find remarkable, especially for us here in Berlin, is that we have opened an airport in between, but have no significant air traffic. The airport operators and airlines are very cautious in saying that they will have reached the old volume again in about five years. We researchers say that within Germany we will never reach the old volume again.
A dream scenario for environmentalists that nobody could have expected. Nevertheless, your descriptions sound more like a swan song for the traffic turnaround.
The picture is mixed. The good news is: feet and bicycles have been more involved in traffic for a year now. In the big cities in particular, there is significantly more bicycle traffic. In Berlin, the pandemic has greatly accelerated the turnaround in traffic. It forced the Senate to finally do things that it had planned for a long time, but not done. Parking lanes have been saved and cycle paths have been painted. That is a clear acceleration of the traffic turnaround. However, that’s almost the only positive thing that can be noticed. The bad news is: the car as a means of transport remains at a high level all the time. After all, and this is a very important finding in the pandemic, people have not bought more cars. With the exception of December, when the VAT incentive expired, 40 percent fewer new vehicles were registered in 2020. The used car market is stagnating. Counterproductive for the traffic turnaround is the rapid decline in public transport – and you can see this again very well in Berlin, for example. Including the long-distance railway, it is not even a fifth of what we had before the pandemic.
Can you already say whether mobility behavior will change permanently? Many people want to live and move like they did before. In that case everything would stay the same.
Basically that’s right, those were compulsory measures in lockdown, none of us did that voluntarily. That is, we will repeat ourselves a great deal of agility. That is why more people went on vacation again in summer 2020. After all, they hardly ever flown!
Let’s try to get to the point: Will our mobility change permanently due to the Corona crisis or not? And will that be for the better or for the worse?
One thing can be said with relative certainty: Everything that has to do with work will be different. Home office will remain an integral part of everyday life. In our opinion, we will only have 70 percent of the work-related trips after the pandemic, which is 30 percent less than before the pandemic. That defuses traffic peaks and that defuses commuting. NRW, a permanent stagnant land, will benefit significantly from this. We know from big companies like Bahn, Telekom, Siemens that they will use more zoom and teams for their meetings in the future too. The federal ministries have significantly reduced their flights between Bonn and Berlin. The other thing that will change is that the number of flights within Germany will not even begin to approach what we had. And that’s because people see that you can live well without flying back and forth between Hamburg and Munich. If we can see a change in awareness anywhere as a result of the Corona crisis, then it is in domestic German air traffic.
That’s a positive change. But will rail and local public transport recover from the corona shock?
Andreas Knie is a social scientist at the Berlin Science Center for Social Research and Professor of Sociology at the TU Berlin.
(Photo: David Ausserhofer)
Local and long-distance public transport are the big losers, and they won’t come back in their old strength either. We wanted to double their share from 15 to 30 percent. Instead, the share has now been halved. We’re at eight percent. That we can achieve the original increases seems completely utopian at the moment. That is the really bad news for the traffic turnaround. At least local public transport will recover somewhat when the millions of tourists return. Leisure and tourism make up at least 30 to 40 percent of total traffic. It is missing now, but it will come back.
Creative ideas in the transport sector were apparently in short supply during the Corona crisis. At least you haven’t met them.
If you ask me: How did local transport get through the crisis? What did he do or come up with something new? Then I have to tell you: nothing at all! The innovation effects in the pandemic in local and long-distance transport are zero. In Berlin, tickets are checked across the board and on a daily basis, and the reservation system is still pounding people away in otherwise empty trains. There is still no flexible pandemic ticket, maybe in August.
It is said that crises are also an opportunity. What you are saying is that the pandemic is more of a crippling …
If you ask me as a sociologist, the pandemic is a bit like mildew on us. It paralyzes our creativity and our feelings. The mood is generally bad. The basic attitude is to go in sackcloth and ashes. There is no joy. In any case, the crisis has not yet provided a boost for innovation.
Diana Dittmer spoke to Andreas Knie
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