How crowded are the streets at Hannover Messe?
With the Hanover Fair, the first major trade fair in Hanover after the two Corona years will start next week. Neither the Deutsche Messe, traffic controllers nor the police really know what the situation on the roads will be like – especially with the bottlenecks on expressways and motorways.
Hanover.Trade fair spokesman Onuora Ogbukagu openly admits that he is “very excited” about the first major trade fair in Hanover after the two years of the pandemic. The industry is still “in the restart phase”. Harald Heuer from the Traffic Management Center (VMZ) Lower Saxony even describes the Hanover Fair, which starts on Monday, as a “big test balloon”. Because: No one can really estimate how many visitors will stream into the state capital by car – and whether there will be traffic jams in view of the numerous bottlenecks such as the dilapidated Weidetor Bridge.
“The situation is very difficult to assess,” says Heuer. One problem is that the fair WILL still contain many digital elements – not everyone necessarily has to be there. “Actually, no one knows what’s going to happen.” While the bottleneck over the dilapidated Südschnellwegbrücke on Hildesheimer Straße already existed before Corona, the situation has deteriorated directly on the Messeschnellweg: At the Weidetor, not only is one lane free in each direction and the speed limit is 40, no vehicles are even allowed more than 3.5 tons of weight roll over it.