The car is - by far - the most important means of transport for travelling to work, with more than one in two employees choosing their own car. By contrast, less than one in six people use public transport to get to work. This is the result of a recent study by the BAT Foundation for Future Studies, for which over 2,000 German citizens were surveyed in representative face-to-face interviews. 
"Despite high petrol prices and numerous traffic jams, Germans prefer to drive their own car to work," says the Foundation's Scientific Director, Professor Dr Ulrich Reinhardt. He cites three main reasons for this: "Firstly, the lack of alternative options, secondly, their own convenience and thirdly, the feeling of individuality between the route they choose, their own speed and their personal radio station."
The number of car pools in Germany is only slowly increasing. Currently, four per cent of employees take a passenger and/or colleague with them. One in seven employees make the journey on foot and one in ten cycle. Differences can be observed within the occupational groups: While around one in three self-employed people walk to their workplace and almost one in two trainees travel by bus or train, 84 per cent of civil servants use their own car.

26 minutes for the journey to work

Almost one in three Germans needs a maximum of ten minutes to reach their workplace. However, almost one in four employees takes longer than forty minutes to get to work and eight per cent even need at least an hour. The same amount of time is added to this for the return journey, meaning that on average Germans spend almost an hour travelling every day. Employees in the metropolises of Berlin and Hamburg take the longest, while Thuringians have the quickest journey to work. As expected, train travellers take the longest to get to work - they spend almost two hours a day commuting. However, only one in fifty employees relies on train services.
Travelling to and from work by public transport or car takes a good hour, whereas cycling (34 minutes) or walking (20 minutes) is quicker - although the workplace is then also much closer to home.

Time and money will decide which mode of transport is chosen in future

Reinhardt: "Germans spend 38 hours a year stuck in traffic jams, their own car is only used eight per cent of the day and serious calculations show that owning a car only pays off in monetary terms if you drive more than 10,000 kilometres a year. Nevertheless, most German citizens still see little alternative to owning a car in the future. In order to cope with the traffic chaos in many cities and municipalities during rush hour and at the same time make a contribution to environmental protection, public transport would first and foremost have to save time and money. On the one hand, this would require the consistent expansion of public transport - more buses and trains at shorter intervals. On the other hand, a change must also pay off financially, otherwise it will still be better to be stuck in a traffic jam than on a bus."