Summer holidays set traffic records on the Storebælt Bridge

Although many have chosen to travel abroad for their summer holidays this year, the figures for traffic crossing the Storebælt Bridge show that quite a few have spent their holidays at home. In July, more than 1.3 million cars drove through the Storebælt Bridge’s toll booths, breaking the existing record from last summer.

Consequently, July was the busiest ever month in the bridge’s history. A total of 1,349,545 vehicles drove across the bridge in July, which is an average of 43,534 per day. This record beats the previous monthly peak from July 2020 of 1,293,596 vehicles.

In addition to the monthly record, a new 24-hour peak was reached. Saturday 31 July was the busiest day of travel on the bridge, with families packed into their cars on their way to and from their summer holidays. A total of 56,291 cars drove over the bridge, breaking the previous 24-hour record set on 17 July this year.

The weekend record from week 30 in 2019 was also broken three times in July, most recently when 107,665 cars crossed the Storebælt Bridge during the weekend of 31 July/1 August, which saw the peak of return traffic after the summer holidays.

The figures show that the number of passenger cars crossing the Storebælt Bridge since the lockdown in March 2020 has followed the tightening and easing of the COVID-19 restrictions. Immediately after the lockdown in March, car traffic fell by approximately 60 percent compared to 2019. During the spring of 2020, traffic increased and returned to normal levels in the summer of 2020 with record figures in July. Thereafter, traffic figures reflected the gradual lockdown from the beginning of September until Christmas, as well as the gradual re-opening with major increases in traffic after Easter.

In the first three-quarters of the year, the number of trucks has not fallen more than 5 percent below the level seen in 2019. Since the beginning of March, however, truck traffic has been approximately 10 percent above 2019 levels.