Drive Awake · Data
At three in the morning the road is not empty
We asked the Federal Roads Office for the hourly counts of six stations on the A2, from Lugano to the Gotthard. They say how many people are on the road in each hour of the day. They do not say how risky it is to drive then, and that difference is worth holding on to.
Official dataWhat we asked for, and why
Drive Awake tells the twenty-four hours of a day at the wheel. The rhythm of the body comes from the research: we know the hours when alertness falls. What was missing was the other half of the scene, how many people are actually driving in those hours. We asked the people who count vehicles, and they gave it to us: hourly values by direction and vehicle class, six stations along the A2, 2019 as a reference and the years 2022 to 2025.
What the numbers say
Traffic has a shape, and the shape changes from one stretch to the next. On the Lugano bypass it is the curve of the commute: it rises at six, holds all day, peaks at four in the afternoon with more than four thousand vehicles an hour, then falls away fast. In the Gotthard tunnel the shape is different: it rises later, peaks at midday, and the night stays fuller, seven and a half per cent of the daily traffic against five in Lugano. That is long-distance transit: people who leave early and arrive late, people crossing the country without stopping.
Share of daily traffic, hour by hour
2022-2025, valid counting days only. The dark bands are the night, 20-04; the orange bands the threshold hours, 05 and 18-19.
Gotthard tunnel
long-distance transit · daily average 18.994 · 1457 valid days
Biasca S
the valley · daily average 33.313 · 1370 valid days
Lugano bypass
the city · daily average 58.425 · 1096 valid days
The numbers, hour by hour
| hour | Gotthard tunnel | Biasca S | Lugano bypass |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00 | 1,4% · 268 | 1,1% · 369 | 1,0% · 609 |
| 01 | 1,2% · 232 | 0,9% · 294 | 0,7% · 418 |
| 02 | 1,0% · 194 | 0,7% · 231 | 0,6% · 322 |
| 03 | 1,0% · 185 | 0,7% · 229 | 0,5% · 315 |
| 04 | 1,2% · 221 | 0,8% · 278 | 0,8% · 489 |
| 05 | 2,1% · 398 | 1,8% · 590 | 2,8% · 1610 |
| 06 | 3,4% · 641 | 3,8% · 1276 | 4,9% · 2834 |
| 07 | 4,2% · 799 | 5,1% · 1705 | 5,7% · 3320 |
| 08 | 4,8% · 903 | 5,1% · 1710 | 5,8% · 3396 |
| 09 | 5,6% · 1066 | 5,7% · 1883 | 5,8% · 3406 |
| 10 | 6,5% · 1226 | 6,4% · 2147 | 6,1% · 3535 |
| 11 | 6,9% · 1312 | 6,8% · 2276 | 6,4% · 3725 |
| 12 | 6,8% · 1296 | 6,5% · 2154 | 6,2% · 3641 |
| 13 | 6,7% · 1272 | 6,7% · 2237 | 6,6% · 3828 |
| 14 | 6,7% · 1273 | 6,9% · 2297 | 6,8% · 3973 |
| 15 | 6,6% · 1260 | 7,0% · 2329 | 7,0% · 4114 |
| 16 | 6,5% · 1227 | 7,3% · 2416 | 7,1% · 4130 |
| 17 | 6,1% · 1159 | 7,0% · 2342 | 6,4% · 3720 |
| 18 | 5,6% · 1061 | 5,8% · 1944 | 5,6% · 3258 |
| 19 | 4,9% · 924 | 4,2% · 1398 | 4,2% · 2480 |
| 20 | 3,8% · 722 | 3,2% · 1073 | 3,0% · 1764 |
| 21 | 3,0% · 573 | 2,6% · 879 | 2,4% · 1411 |
| 22 | 2,4% · 454 | 2,2% · 739 | 2,1% · 1237 |
| 23 | 1,7% · 328 | 1,6% · 519 | 1,5% · 891 |
The quietest hour is not an empty hour
At three in the morning, when alertness reaches its lowest point of the day, one hundred and eighty-five vehicles an hour still pass through the Gotthard tunnel, two hundred and twenty-nine at Biasca, three hundred and fifteen at Lugano. One every twenty seconds, one every sixteen, one every eleven. The road at night is not empty: it is less crowded, and those on it are on it at the worst hour.
What these numbers do not say
They do not say how risky it is to drive at that hour. A count measures how many people go past, not what happens to them: for that you need crash data, which is another source. A road with fewer cars is not a safer road, and a peak hour is not a dangerous hour. What we are describing here is exposure, how many people are in the situation we are talking about. The rest is a different question, and we keep it separate.
How we read them
The stretches when a counter was not working, roadworks or faults, do not arrive as empty cells: they arrive as zeros. Add them up without noticing and the averages come out false with nothing to warn you, and at one station the gap is almost fourfold. We excluded them: a day whose total is zero is a day with no data. For each station we say how many valid days we used. Of the six, two have continuous series and four have series with gaps, so any comparison between stretches holds only over the same declared period.
The question that stays open
We know how many people are on the road at three in the morning.
We do not know how many of them are fighting to stay awake. That is exactly the space where Drive Awake works.
Origin and sources
Federal Roads Office FEDRO, Verkehrsmonitoring section, delivery of 9 September 2026. Stations 507 Lugano bypass, 137 Monte Ceneri, 100 Bellinzona bypass, 166 Biasca S, 293 Quinto, 150 Gotthard tunnel. Hourly values 2019 and 2022-2025, both directions added, ten vehicle classes. On this page: 2022-2025, on valid counting days (1457, 1370 and 1096 days). FEDRO is not responsible for the accuracy of the data provided and possible measurement inaccuracies remain reserved. Processing Drive Awake · Opening®.
Circadian rhythm of alertness and sleep-related crashes: Horne JA, Reyner LA, Sleep related vehicle accidents, BMJ 1995, DOI 10.1136/bmj.310.6979.565. Counts and research remain two distinct sources: the first says how many people pass, the second in which hours alertness falls.
Staying awake, at the wheel and in life.