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A while ago, I drove from Poznań (PL) to Brussels (B) on a Sunday, and noticed that there were several huge traffic jams due to roadworks on Germany's A2 road. Specifically around Hannover and Helmstedt there was quite a lot of near standstill traffic.

Considering that this was just a regular Sunday, I'm going to assume that it's almost always going to be this busy, and that taking this road will generally cost quite some time. Hence my question: is there a different road that I could take, which would save me some time? Google Maps suggests taking the A38 road through Leipzig, Kassel and Dortmund, but I'm skeptical about whether this will be faster.

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    When do you want to drive? For example, Google maps can show you the current traffic on the highways. So if you look precisely 1 week in advance, you are getting a good idea about where are the traffic jams. There are also some official pages, such as autobahn.nrw.de/mobil that show you the current traffic status (the link is only for the last part of your journey).
    – DCTLib
    Commented May 29, 2015 at 11:21
  • I have travelled this road 30-50 times in the last ten years, often on Sundays, and it's not always that bad. Consequently, there are no obvious alternatives that would be guaranteed to beat it. Listen to the radio and be flexible, worse case take a break and enjoy your time. Also, if that makes you feel better, Fridays are worse than Sundays I think.
    – Relaxed
    Commented May 29, 2015 at 13:50

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There really isn't a good alternative. You could try to go further south via A39, A7 and/or A44 but it's substantially longer and has pretty much the same traffic challenges (if not worse). High speed train (ICE) would be significantly faster and more predictable, if that's an option. It's about 4.5 hours. And they sell beer on the train :-)

As said in the comments, real time traffic monitoring with google maps or equivalent is your best bet here.

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