One year of economy in lockdown: the pandemic is throwing back the traffic turnaround

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Tuesday March 23, 2021

A year of economy in lockdown
The pandemic throws back the turnaround in traffic

The pandemic destroyed the life’s work of thousands of entrepreneurs, destroyed and newly created assets on the stock exchanges, made millions of jobs unsafe and shook Germany’s solid state finances. Amongst other things. One year after the start of the previously unthinkable, a state-ordered shutdown of large parts of the economy, ntv.de draws a balance in the spotlights. Episode six: How the crisis is changing traffic.

The previous episodes of “One year of the economy in shutdown”:

  1. From stock market crash to soaring
  2. Only a mountain of debt remains of the lifelong dream
  3. Last hope online shop
  4. In the waiting “hell” of Corona aid

  5. Corona brings back inflation

Daily kilometers per person 2020

(Photo: Social Science Research Center Berlin – WZB)

Shorter distances, but more cars, hardly any sharing offers and less local and long-distance public transport. “The traffic turnaround fell by the wayside in the pandemic,” says mobility researcher Andreas Knie ntv.de. The share of local and long-distance public transport should be doubled from 15 to 30 percent before Corona. Instead, the share has now been halved. “That we can get from this level to the old 15 and beyond is completely utopian,” said Knie.

What the scientist misses are creative ideas: “In Berlin, tickets are checked across the board and on a daily basis, the reservation system is still pounding people away in otherwise empty trains. Innovation effects through Corona? “Nothing,” so the sociologist’s conclusion.

Knie works at the Berlin Science Center for Social Research. According to his calculations, people’s range of motion in the hard lockdown has shrunk by a third compared to the pre-Corona period. At the end of the first quarter of 2021, mobility will still be 20 percent below the 2019 level. He expects some of this to be regained with increasing vaccinations. But we will probably never be as mobile as before. One reason is the home office, “a long-term change,” as Knie says.

For the time after the pandemic, the researcher expects around a third less work-related trips. And something else could change in the long term: The domestic German flight volume should no longer even begin to reach the pre-crisis level. “If we can see a change in awareness anywhere through the Corona crisis, then it is here,” said Knie.

More on the topic of how Corona affects our mobility has changed, read You in the detailed coverage of ntv.de:

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