Exberliner Issue 171 May 2018

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Berlin
by Dan Borden
On the bike path
to hell
What is the city doing to improve
conditions for cyclists?
Cyclists are saints. With every pedal
spin, they bolster our fragile planet
while strengthening their hearts,
calves and karma. But not for traffic planners
– in their binary world, cars zoom along
streets and pedestrians waddle along sidewalks.
They don’t know where to put those
two-wheeled agents of anarchy.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Berlin’s planners
designated cyclists pedestrians and gave the
newly-united city a network of sidewalk
cycle lanes. They didn’t foresee our bike
population explosion. Half a million now
clog those narrow paths every day. And they
couldn’t predict today’s smartphone-chatting
e-bikers, Deliveroo kamikazes or swarms
of zombie-like bicycle tourists. Bikes-for-rent
pile up on every street corner.
Berlin’s cycling chaos is more than a headache.
It’s getting increasingly dangerous. In
2016 Berlin saw 7500 accidents involving
bicycles, and 19 cyclists were killed – about
one every three weeks.
In December 2015, a golden bicycle appeared
in front of Berlin’s city hall. It carried
a manifesto from the activist group Volksentscheid
Fahrrad, a 10-point plan to make
Berlin more cyclist-friendly and safe. Then-
Transport Senator Andreas Geisel dismissed
the demands, pointing out that the city was
already spending €14 million a year on its bike
network. So the activists raised the stakes.
They gathered 105,000 signatures, enough
to put their proposals to a public vote in
the September 2016 election. Facing likely
defeat, Berlin’s Senate threw in the towel and
adopted Volksentscheid Fahrrad’s plan as law.
Last December, current Transport Senator
Regine Günther signed off on an annual cycle
infrastructure budget of €50 million.
The 10 points boil down to three flavours
of new, street-level bikelanes:
A street of their own
The plans call for 350km of safe Fahrradstraßen,
a network of bicycle-priority routes
converted from existing streets in the city
centre (photo). Residents’ cars and delivery
vans would be permitted, but cyclists are
boss. Berlin already has bike-priority streets
– such as Linienstraße in Mitte and Wilmersdorf’s
Prinzregentenstraße – but they’re
poorly marked and unenforced.
Please mind the bollards
In addition to the Fahrradstraßen, Berlin’s
government has committed to giving all
major thoroughfares two-metre-wide bike
lanes at street level, clearly marked and protected
from four-wheeled invaders (and their
swinging doors) by kerbs or other barriers.
Work is underway on the first, along Kreuzberg’s
Hasenheide.
Cycling Superhighways
Another key demand is 100km of Radschnellwege,
or bike speedways. Planners have
already mapped out eight radial routes linking
the city’s outskirts to the centre, often
through parks or abandoned railyards. The
first is planned to run north from Adlershof
along the A-113 highway, then across Tempelhof
into Kreuzberg.
The law prescribes 350km of
new “cycle streets” by 2025.
Other Volksentscheid Fahrrad goals:
100,000 more bike parking spaces, cyclistfriendlier
intersections, and a city-funded ad
campaign to promote cycling. That last demand
may prove critical. Despite their good
intentions, the saintly activists have stirred
up some bad blood.
High on the list of bike haters are the car
and lorry drivers set to lose traffic lanes
and parking spaces. The three opposition
parties in Berlin’s Senate have banded
together, declaring the bike-friendly proposals
a “culture war against car drivers.”
And imagine the reactions of Fahrradstraße
residents when their centuries-old
cobblestones are ripped out and replaced
by teal-coloured polyethylene pavers. With
their laundry list of demands and lofty
tone, cyclists risk casting themselves as a
privileged minority.
Through clever political maneuvering,
the Volksentscheid Fahrrad got their
ideas carved into law and even funded.
Now comes the hard part: concrete action.
Berlin’s Senate, perhaps burned by having
the plans jammed down their throat, is
dragging its feet. That 2015 golden-bike
manifesto called for Berlin to be transformed
into a cyclist’s paradise by 2025.
Since then, just a single new bike lane has
been approved for construction. Activist
Peter Feldkamp bemoaned the lack
of progress in Tagesspiegel, saying, “If the
Senate keeps working at this rate, it
will take 150 years.” ■
Gitti La Mar / Rabea Seibert / Volksentscheid Fahrrad
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