The Germans are a people of commuters.

The commute to work is around 16 kilometers – on average.

Many take much longer distances into account.

Around 1.3 million people even cover more than 150 kilometers on one route, as the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development determined in the pre-Corona times.

Incidentally, most of the employees drive alone: ​​according to a recent study by the Agora Verkehrswende think tank, around 63 percent of professional journeys are made by car, only 4 percent of them as passengers.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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In pandemic times, commuting has temporarily reduced drastically, but there is little to suggest that this slump will last.

After a long period of being obliged to work from home, many companies are calling their employees back to the office - if only to save the team spirit.

"A trend reversal is currently not foreseeable, also as a result of the corona pandemic," the study says soberly.

Agora Verkehrswende created it together with the Institute for Regional and Urban Development Research in Dortmund.

In times of climate change and energy shortages, this seems to be a concept from a bygone era.

In connection with the study, Agora Verkehrswende has therefore submitted proposals for a comprehensive reform of commuting.

The goal: "Commuters don't always need new financial relief from politicians, but a plan on how they can get to work in a climate-friendly manner in the future," said Christian Hochfeld, Director of Agora Verkehrswende, with a view to the recently agreed relief package from the traffic light coalition.

Among other things, it envisages lowering the prices at the pump by lowering the tax.

Wrong incentives set

What is needed instead is a clear turnaround: For decades, politicians have provided incentives to accept ever longer commutes and to primarily travel them by private car alone.

Because many families now afford not just one, but two vehicles and like to live in the countryside, the distance to work has become longer and longer in recent decades - 45 years ago the average distance to work was only half as long.

"The current crisis shows that this not only imposes high ecological costs on society, but also entails security risks and drives people into the oil price trap," complained Hochfeld.

Outdated privileges for car traffic hindered the transformation and came at the expense of the general public.

For a change in traffic on the way to work, a reduction in car privileges is "essential", according to the study.

After all, commuter traffic plays “a key role” on the way to climate-neutral mobility in Germany.

The journey between home and work is responsible for a fifth of all passenger traffic.

Instead, people would have to be persuaded to use local public transport more.

But you also have to set the right incentives.

City toll as a possible measure

A noticeable reduction in car use in commuter traffic and the resulting CO2 emissions can only be achieved if price and infrastructure measures are taken to limit car traffic.

As a measure, a congestion charge is mentioned, which, like in London, imposes higher costs on drivers if they want to drive into the city center with their vehicle.

In addition, parking should become more expensive, and free parking spaces should be reduced.

Another suggestion is that the commuter allowance should be converted into a mobility allowance, gearing the vehicle tax more closely to CO2 emissions.

And this package also contains a demand that has been raised more frequently in recent weeks: a general speed limit, not just on the autobahn,

Expansion of local public transport

Of course, this must be flanked by better alternatives: According to the study, a central lever is a massive expansion of local public transport, for example through higher frequency.

In addition, it is a matter of supplementing efficient local transport axes - for example with district buses and pedestrian and bicycle transport offers, in order to be able to cover the first and last mile of routes independently of the car: if this door-to-door mobility is not guaranteed in the worst case, the entire commute would be covered by car and the public transport connection would not be fully effective.

If traffic experts have their way, the future of commuting could look like this: less by car, much more by bus and train or, for shorter distances, by bicycle.

Significant displacement effects can only be achieved if a mix of measures contains instruments that make using the car on the way to work unattractive, it says: "Only if commuters have to pay for the actual costs of owning and using a car will a Consider switching to alternative modes of transport.”