Boisterous weather with rain showers and heavy wind gusts caused heavy traffic on the Brabant highways Thursday morning. At its peak, there were some 350 kilometres of traffic jams in our province. Nationwide, it was the busiest morning rush hour of the year. Due to the bad weather, a busy evening rush hour is also expected. According to the ANWB, Brabant’s roads are not designed to handle these crowds: “Two lanes is not enough in many places.”
A long traffic jam developed early on Thursday morning on the A27 (from Breda towards Gorinchem) after an accident. Traffic suffered a delay of almost an hour and a half. Traffic also jammed on the A2 after an accident. Meanwhile, the lanes at these two spots have been released again and the delay is decreasing.
As expected, it was a lot busier than usual on the road. “The daily traffic jams are getting longer as people keep more distance because of the weather. This has the effect of making traffic jams longer but, as a result, the number of accidents also falls,” says Wijnand Zwaan of the ANWB.
The A2, A27 and A50 in particular stood out because of longer than usual traffic jams.
‘Two lanes are not enough’
According to Zwaan, Brabant’s roads are not designed to handle the high volume of traffic in our province. “Brabant is a transit province, with a lot of freight traffic and commuter traffic. The roads in Brabant are not designed for that, in many places two lanes are not enough. You see that on the A58 between Tilburg and Eindhoven but also on the A59 between Den Bosch and junction Hooipolder.”
He makes the comparison with the Randstad, where roads around Amsterdam are wider, resulting in fewer traffic jams.
Record congestion
Rijkswaterstaat and ANWB advise road users to work from home or drive outside rush hours. Nationwide, there were 972 kilometres of traffic jams at the peak, according to Zwaan, breaking the national record. The previous national record was on Tuesday 27 September, when there were 925 kilometres of traffic jams in the morning rush hour.
Source: Omroepbrabant
Translated by: Simge Taşdemir
