It was a particularly arduous drive into work for many on Tuesday morning. The morning rush hour was the busiest so far this year and at around 8.30am there were more than 300 kilometres of traffic jams on the region’s motorways and trunk roads. Peter Bruyninckx of the Flemish Traffic Centre says that the remarkable thing is that it was not a major accident that caused the traffic congestion on Tuesday morning.
Busiest morning rush hour of the year so far with more that 300km of jams on the region’s highways
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At around 8.30am the Flemish Traffic Centre reported over 300 km of jams on motorways and trunk roads in Flanders. This was 462 km in Belgium as a whole. This means that the morning rush hour on 14 March will go down as being the busiest so far in 2023.
The Flemish traffic Centre’s Peter Bruyninckx told VRT News that "The wet weather certainly played a role, but there were a lot of people out on the roads”.
This view is echoed by the VRT’s traffic expert Hajo Beeckman. "In the morning the most people are on the roads on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rain was the big spoiler here. A front that brought a lot of rain with it crossed the country from west to east over the centre of the country between 7am and 9am. It was above all this that led to long tailbacks”.
However, despite the rain, accidents played little if any role in lengthening the tailbacks.
Rain and wind
Hajo Beeckman explains that rain and wind always lead to tailbacks on our roads. “On 17 November last year there were similar conditions and there were tailbacks totaling 433 kilometres in Belgium. The morning rush hours of 17 November 2022 and today were the worst of the past 15 months”.