The AP-7 highway recorded up to 462 accidents with injuries between January and August 2024 during its passage through Catalonia, according to data from the Catalan Transport Service (SCT) of the Generalitat obtained by the ACN agency. The motorway accident rate is increasing, since the figure is 3% higher than the same period in 2023, and 28% higher than the same period in 2019, the last non-pandemic year before the end tolls. However, fatal accidents have fallen again to four in the last five years.
On the other hand, the hours of traffic jams on the road already total more than 5,000 this year, thus exceeding by 50% those of the whole of 2019. The SCT attributes these figures to the increase in traffic derived from free highways , but he adds that, at the same time, the accident rate has further decreased on other roads.
The number of accidents with casualties of any degree on the AP-7 was 370 between January and August 2019, a figure that decreased over the next two years, coinciding with the pandemic. In 2022, with the free motorway, the number of accidents resurfaced to 451 during the same period, and this figure stabilized upward both last year (457) and in 2024 ( 466). Although in 2019 the accident rate on this road represented 18% of the entire Catalan road network, this proportion exceeded 20%, coinciding with the end of tolls.
Serious accidents, which resulted in serious injuries or deaths, also saw a slight increase, with 21 recorded in the first eight months of 2019. In the three years since tolls ended, there were has always had more – this year the figure reached 30. However, incidents resulting in fatalities were 9 in 2019, increased to 17 in 2022, but fell to 4 from January to August this year – the minimum value of the last five years.
More hours of delays and longer queues
On the other hand, with the data of the first three full years after the payment barriers were lifted, traffic jams also increased on this route: traffic jams lasted 3,776 hours on the AP-7 throughout the year 2019. The figure was similar. until the end of the tolls. Since then, the patience of drivers has been forced to increase: in 2022 the figure increased to 5,918 hours, it increased the following year to 6,473 hours, or 71% more, and everything indicates that this year there will be even more. Between January and August, the highway has already added 5,622, closing in on last year’s total and surpassing the 12 months of 2019 by almost 50%.
The average length of each reservoir has also increased in recent years, since from 3.28 kilometers five years ago it increased to 3.53 kilometers this year, in line with the entire period after the end of payment for the road use.
The AP-7 and C-33, “particularly affected”
Trànsit explains to the ACN agency that the increase in accidents and delays, “caused by accidents or by a simple lack of road capacity”, is a consequence of the increase in the influx of vehicles on the AP- 7. According to the same source, some of the drivers who traveled on other roads now do so on the AP-7 and C-33, which are “particularly affected” by these route changes.
So much so that the average number of light vehicles traveling on the road at kilometer point 169.2, near Martorell, was around 80,000 each day in 2019, a figure that has been steadily increasing since the beginning free, up to 106,196 on a daily average. .
They indicate, however, that the incidents caused by the increase in traffic “are less serious than if they occurred on one of the alternative routes”. Furthermore, they claim that at the same time, the accident rate has decreased on these alternative routes, and that by a greater proportion than the increase recorded on the highway.
Trànsit adds that traffic has increased on the entire AP-7, but in the central section it has decreased – especially the heavy traffic – “because a certain flow of vehicles coming from the north and bound for Barcelona take now the C-33.” . The data confirms this, since at kilometer 146.5, in Barberà del Vallès and between the C-58 and the C-33, the average number of light vehicles registered each day is 136,161 this year, approximately 50,000 less than last year. . In the case of trucks and similar, the decline is much more pronounced, since from practically 72,000 each day, it has fallen to less than 20,000.
