[ad_1]
Despite the climate crisis, private transport has increased significantly in Germany: according to the Federal Statistical Office, there is one car for every second inhabitant, but the number of passengers on public transport is also growing.
There are more and more cars in Germany, but no more roads. More and more people use public transport, but the rail network is barely growing with them. The main investments are in the highways and the eastern road network. The Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden extracts this balance from the Federal Motor Transport Authority figures and its own calculations.
According to this, the density of cars in Germany increased by 12 percent between 2009 and 2019. More recently, there was an average of 569 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, as announced by statistics. Ten years earlier it was 509.
Berliners have very few cars
Car density was highest in Saarland: 640 cars were counted for every 1000 inhabitants there. They were followed by Rhineland-Palatinate (619) and Bavaria (613). By far the fewest cars per 1000 inhabitants was in Berlin (335). Other city-states also have comparatively few cars per capita due to better local public transportation.
But there are no more roads for the growing number of cars. “While the number of cars in Germany has increased for years, the length of the road network has stagnated,” the statisticians said. From 1995 to 2019, the regional transport network grew by around 1,200 kilometers. All highways, federal, state and district highways together were 230,000 kilometers long last year.
Highways were built mainly in the east
After German reunification, the main focus was on the roads of the eastern federal states. In the east, the length of roads in regional traffic increased by 3.4 percent between 1995 and 2019. In the west, the length of the highway even decreased in the same period, if only by 0.4 percent.
Above all, the motorway network became more dense. The total length of all motorways in Germany grew by 18 percent between 1995 and 2019. All motorways added last resulted in a good 13,100 kilometers. More was built in the eastern federal states. The total length in the east grew by 57 percent to 3,050 kilometers. In western Germany, the network expanded by almost 10 percent to 10,100 kilometers.
The rail network in the west has even shrunk
According to statistics, the road network in Germany is almost six times denser than the rail network. In 2019, there were almost 230,000 kilometers of roads and 42,000 kilometers of rails, including trams. The rail network grew nationwide by just 1.5 percent between 2005 and 2019. While inventory in the west decreased by 0.6 percent, the network in the east expanded by 6.6 percent. hundred.
However, more people use public transport. The number of people transported by buses and trains increased from 10.6 billion in 2010 to 11.4 billion in 2019, representing an increase of eight percent. The number of public transport users in the eastern federal states increased more strongly than in the western ones. Growth in Berlin was particularly strong at 24.6 percent.
