Are parts of Europe dying under its own weight?

It is unclear whether you were driving during peak-hours or non-peak. Increased truck activity signifies movement of goods (i.e. economic activity that has value), so I'm not sure how to square that with a "dying" Europe - seems like the opposite. Belgium, as an example, has several ports from which goods are carried away. At least in some parts of Europe, trucks are actually restricted to the left lane, unlike many highways in the US where there are in just about every lane (you should see the Los Angeles highways).

It's odd to pontificate about congestion when your own car equally contributes to congestion (except from everyone else's standpoint). People who are riding on the train instead probably aren't going to complain as they are zipping from place to place unencumbered, and they have good public transport as an alternative to cars. All the countries you named have excellent passenger rail. As far as tour buses go, those tour companies plan around congestion by trying to travel in non-peak hours as much as they can, just as regular vehicle travelers do. Trucks are harder to tackle because it is unclear whether those trips can either be scrapped outright (could rail serve as a more economical and/or timely alternative?) or shifted to other time periods. Some truck volume is inevitable with the advent on just-in-time delivery or transport of time-sensitive goods that can't be transported by cheaper, slower means (rail, barge, etc).

The future hinges on factors such as improved infrastructure planning and projects to reduce bottlenecks (including improvements in port infrastructure); availability of alternatives to driving for daily trips; shifting of movement of goods from truck to rail (if possible) for some trips; and changing truck and passenger car driver behavior (from peak to non-peak time periods).

This has been the Swiss solution for some time now, so I'm not sure what you are referring to when you include Switzerland in your list.

We are just back from Scotland, London, and a week in the Lorie Valley in France. To us seem very similar to the US - traffic flows, patterns, trucks, etc., I commented a couple that if you took a video of many of the country side areas it would be hard to know you were not in Iowa, Ill, or any of the rolling farm states. We were away from the big cities and didn't feel that the truck traffic was any different. Now I am used to the truck around I 80/I90 on the south end of Lake Michigan. Now that is truck traffic!!

Oh, no!

I hope this is not a trend. The more the roads get clogged, the more people will move to trains, so they will get more crowded.

I really like my fast, convenient, uncrowded, relaxing train travel.

Perhaps the same question could be asked about the US?
Lack of infrastructure investment, etc.

There are plenty of trains that are well overcrowded too. A 'good' experience of this is the 19:15 from Paddington to Swansea. I don't recommend trying this for yourself.

Hi Glenn,

It's not just Europe. At least the trucks stay in the right lane there. Drive Rt. 80 here in NJ around 8am or 5pm. I mean sit on Rt. 80 around 5pm, as there's not much driving going on. Ditto for the Garden State Parkway heading north in the am. or south in the pm any weekday evening or especially on a nice weekend. Been like this for as long as I can remember. For real fun, get on Rt. 4 in the am or pm in Bergen County, NJ.

Paul

Well said Paul. I'm taking Mega Bus to Albany tomorrow and AmTrack back to NYC on Sunday. It will be my first experience with Mega Bus, but a lot of people use it here. It will be interesting to see if we arrive on schedule.

Pam

Hi Pamela,

Id be interested to hear your Mega Bus experience. We see them quite often around here.

Paul

The only way to fix the problem is to replace the greedy consumerist capitalist society with one based on love, sharing and deep introspection.

Traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area is gridlock for hours every week day morning and from 2:30-7:30 every afternoon. And heavy traffic all day every day. It just gets worse and worse every year. Don't know how this can ever be fixed (realistically) and it's only going to continue to get worse. As the population keeps growing, this is the result. I assume it's the same In Europe.

We've never been in heavy traffic in Europe (except driving out of Paris) but that's because we take the scenic roads or trains.

"The only way to fix the problem is to replace the greedy consumerist capitalist society with one based on love, sharing and deep introspection."

James, didn't they try that in the 60's? Too bad it didn't 'take'.

Unfortunately Europe is dealing with the same issues as the US when it comes to road travel. Too many cars and not enough infrastructure. At least much of Europe has good train service as an alternative, something we don't have here. Best advice for tourists (travelers) is to avoid driving in the larger cities and try to travel at non-peak times - that goes for both trains and auto routes. Leave the 'rush hours' to the locals, they have to deal with it.

But the traffic in Europe is spoiling our vacations. It would be nice if they were educated to be just as happy with less. After all they didn't have all those cars in the 1890's and the cities and life styles were so much more quaint and picturesque.

If you drove from Bavaria to Belgium, I'm guessing you probably drove via A3. This is one of the busiest arteries in Europe, as it's the major link of the northern ports in Belgium and the Netherlands to central Europe. A whole lot of traffic also passes along this road heading to and from Italy.

@ James E. That's hilarious! "...consumerist capitalist society with one based on love, sharing and deep introspection"... and this coming from a Budapest land baron! 😉

thanks for the replies, we were not travelling at 'peak' times, And yes we were adding to the problem, I guess like all the other tourists in all towns we visit. ( which is almost a topic by itself)I guess I just can't fathom that with all the great rail systems, that I have enjoyed over here, that more freight could not be moved by rail?
we move to England and Wales in a few days, so it will be interesting to compare the traffic, while driving there.

To add to Tom's comments, when you were driving from Amsterdam to Ghent you were crossing one of the most densely populated places on the planet in that part of the Netherlands and Belgium, with the density even higher in the Randstad area of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht).

Crossing over to the UK, the traffic will be denser around London and the SE of England and get lighter as you move to Wales.

At least it is possible with perseverance and patience to move between the trucks and get off the road when needed. Imagine what it would be like if Europe adopted the "road train" concept seen elsewhere.

I don't much care for the trucks but it means that the economy is on the way back up.

Driving in Europe without trucks is easy. Go on Sunday.

My husband and I drove from Lille to Gray last fall on a Friday afternoon, we still comment on how nice it was that trucks had to stay right! I wish we would adopt that law here. As far as the traffic, it was much less than I would have expected between 2pm and 7pm anywhere.

Heavy commercial traffic would indicate to me that, in fact, Europe is thriving rather than dying. It may not correspond to some travelers' pre-industrial stereotypes of "quaint", but Europe is not a giant open air folk museum or Disney World for adults. It's a place where millions of people outside of the Rothenburgs, the Cinque Terres, and the Colmars need to make a living doing other things beside catering to tourists expectations.

Sarcasm to be effective requires an audience with intelligence and a solid grasp of the obvious ......... like Peter for instance. Well done Peter. I only wish I were a land baron. Right now "Eastern European Slum Lord" is usually the description I get. But I am working on it. Of course to be successful we need strong economies which will rely on more trucks; so keep'em rolling! To be serious for a moment, there are times when I see the inner city congestion in otherwise wonderful places like Prague and London and even Paris and I wish it were different but I also know that its pretty selfish to think like that. All in all I think the Europeans as a whole do a pretty good job at balancing everything. I suppose they could improve some of the major arteries by making them 8 lanes wide but I would rather wait in line a little longer in a 2 lane highway that doesn't cut a scar across the landscape the way an American Interstate does. But those are their choices and as a guest I respect that.

I saw a lot of construction cranes in Paris last month.

Yes, I've noticed quite a bit of truck traffic in Germany. I remember well the A-8 between Karlsruhe and Stuttgart in what I expected to be pristine country highway and was a actually a lorry parking lot going up the hill toward Pforzheim. It occurred to me that in Europe, the rails primarily move people, not freight. In the US, they kicked people off the rails years ago in favor of freight. I am seeing more container trains, but not as many in the US. When the new Gotthard Tunnel is completed, it should take some of the heat off crossing the Alps.
So track time is at a premium. They can run freight at night, when there are fewer passenger trains running, but then the locals living near the rail lines complain of being kept up all night by the constant rumble of the freight trains. There is still a lot of container traffic on the Rhine and it tributaries. That takes a bit of the heat off the roads and is something unheard of in the US.
Ah, Rt. 4, nostalgia.

LOL... Ah Rt. 4, nostalgia.
It hasn't been getting better. Quite the opposite. An absolute nightmare.
May as well throw in Rt. 17 and 22 while I'm at it, LOL. :(

I remember well the A-8 between Karlsruhe and Stuttgart in what I expected to be pristine country highway and was a actually a lorry parking lot going up the hill toward Pforzheim.

I can picture it exactly... the road dips down then immediately goes up a long hill again. You tend to remember these things when you've driven through them so slowly multiple times.

Traffic on the minds of Guardian readers:

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/08/cycling-revolution-readers-discuss-end-car-age

That confluence in Belgium and The Netherlands of three economic important rivers (Scheldt, Meuse an Rhine) makes it the major hub for European intercontinental freight transport. So there is a whole cluster of seaports connecting industrial centres deep in Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Northern France (even Paris) with the Atlantic. Further there is an extensive pipeline, road and rail network to make the transport of all that freight to and from the hinterland possible. Obvious the closer to these ports the more intense the traffic becomes, so no wunder you see it´s busy on the roads here (btw I live north of Ghent).

This is the case already for decades (as long as I can remember), especially with trucks. Good for the economy but certainly a challenge to find the balance between it and the environment. Meaning making as much efficient use of the existing infrastructure as possible. It undergoes a constant proces of improvements, like for instance the removal of bottlenecks. If you live for a while here you will see how much effort is done to achieve that, so no worry we are not dying...........

Switzerland is mainly a transit area, it connects the industrial areas of northern Italy with the mentioned areas north of the Alps. They want to keep those “foreign” trucks from their roads as much as possible. The trains run there mainly on hydro-elektric power and so makes from an environmental point of view the transport of trucks by trains understandable. I think this is an unique situation, in other places it will make transport too complicated.

Good ideas are always welcome, so drop a line to Brussels if you have one! :)

wil, thanks for the info, while in Italy last year we noticed that the trucks were off the roads on Sunday ( for memory) is this consistent across the other countries mentioned in this post? and are there other 'limits' on their moments?

we did notice that close to Amsterdam the roads were very wide, eg: plenty of lanes, a lot of them not even used. but it soon got down to 2 lanes each way ( as we headed south towards Ghent) from what we experienced I certainly pity the truck drivers trying to make good time in that traffic. we were OK as the traffic, going south was not as heavy as heading north.

Sunday is in most countries a day of rest, so obviously much lesser trucks are on the road. But no idea about the specific differences between countries.

The roads around Amsterdam (being part of densily populated “Randstad”) are made specially wide for dealing with peak hours, so more for commuter traffic instead freight transport. Besides that people are stimulated to make use of public transport and/or their bikes.

As long roads can deal safe with the traffic, freeways will have only 2 lanes each way and I feel sorry too for the truck drivers constantly looking all the time at the backside of their collegues truck on those busy roads, absolutely boring. Most traffic heading north comes from Northern France and Belgium goes to Rotterdam, Europes biggest and busied port (Antwerp is second).

If everyone stayed home, we wouldn't have these problems! ; > )