Morning rush hour almost at record levels due to rain, incidents and structural traffic jams

With 460 kilometers of traffic jams on Belgian roads at their peak shortly after 8 a.m., Thursday was the second busiest morning rush hour of the year. A wet morning made the structural traffic jams longer.

At the Flemish Traffic Center, which monitors traffic on the Flemish highways and regional roads, the traffic jam barometer at its peak tended to 300 km of traffic jams, slightly below the record (314 km) of the morning rush hour of April 24, 2023. ‘That was a rush hour with heavy rainfall and hardly any incidents. The final figures will only be known on Friday morning after any errors have been cleared up,’ says spokesperson Peter Bruyninckx.

This morning rush hour was marked by a few serious incidents. On the E17 in Lokeren, glass load loss caused two blocked lanes, resulting in up to 14 km of traffic jams and 1 hour of queuing. On the E17 Kortrijk-Ghent, an accident in Deerlijk caused 9 km of traffic jams since 7.30 am and an hour and a half of queuing.

‘The structural traffic jams around Antwerp and Brussels were particularly heavy,’ says Peter Bruyninckx.

The influence of the second day of the rail strike is unknown. ‘On Wednesday the strike had little impact. A rail strike has little impact on traffic on the highways, due to the introduction of teleworking since the corona crisis,” says Bruyninckx. “Maybe it’s harder for some people to telecommute two days in a row?”