Up to five hours!

Traffic jam on the Tangente: “Never experienced anything like it”

Anyone who knows the Tangente is used to traffic jams - but not to this extent and certainly not on a Sunday.(Bild: Karl Schöndorfer / picturedesk.com, Krone KREATIV)

Construction work on the Tangente and only one lane free - what during the week makes every Viennese break out in a sweat just imagining it, caused a record traffic jam on Sunday. The waiting time was up to five hours. "I've never experienced anything like it here," says a colleague from Burgenland, who gave up after three hours.

Between the Prater junction and St. Marx, everything was already closed from midday on Sunday - due to construction work, only one lane was open until five o'clock on Monday morning. Traffic was backed up for miles on the A23 on what is actually the least busy day of the week, even as far back as the A4 eastbound freeway.

Shortly after 12 noon, the colleague from Sport had set off from Eisenstadt. Three hours later, he had only just made it to the St. Marx exit. But that was the end of the line. "Nothing happened for an hour," Thomas Steiger explains. "Many people got off to see if anything had happened." "Nothing happened" - the record traffic jam was solely due to congestion.

"The bottom line is that it was an absolutely amazing Sunday!"
The advantage for Steiger: he was finally able to leave at St. Marx and return to Eisenstadt without having to drive to the editorial office in Muthgasse - where, according to the satnav, it would have taken him another 1.5 hours, at best. "Many others weren't so lucky, they were stuck and couldn't get anywhere. Especially families who may have spent their day off with children in a traffic jam on the Tangente. The bottom line is that it was an absolutely crazy Sunday!"

The construction work should be finished by five o'clock in the morning. Until then, all drivers need to keep their nerve, allow enough time - and if possible, consider taking detours via less congested roads.