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Berlin was on such a great path by giving more space to people instead of to cars. Too bad the rich people are winning the debate and taking back what little gains the general public made.
90% of all trips taken inside the Ring are done without a car, but cars get about 25% of the public space. Transferring more of that car space to bikes would enable even more efficient transit for multi-kilometer trips.
Even a city like Amsterdam, which is lauded for bike transit, is still 15-18% dedicated to cars. Berlin can do so much better with less car space, more pedestrian/cars, and densifying more of the housing construction.
I thought Berlin figured this out years ago. They have grey sidewalks for walking, red sidewalks for bikes, a lane for trams, a lane for cars. In the morning, business types ride bikes downtown in suits.
If only that were true across the city. The grey vs red is mostly true (some areas don’t have that clear of a delineation). There’s also some green roads that are bike-priority spaces.
Too much of the tram routes are completely shared with cars and don’t have signal priority for the trams. This causes lots of bunching and delays when cars just choose to not leave the tram rails to wait for turning lights. Those intersections need some serious overhauls (Looking the ones between Chausseestraße and Hbf).
If the city would remove more parking on side streets to open that space up for people and slim down the number of car lanes passing through areas it would help a ton. The whole idea of continuing to build the A100 through the city is insane given the last 80 years of evidence saying it’s bad for the city, the people, the climate, and the drivers. That’s very much an old model of thinking that the leadership is dangling in front of the conservatives to keep them happy at the expense of everyone.
Berlin can do better.
It’s paradise compared to NA cities
And Mumbai as well I guess but we should keep getting better nevertheless
I don’t know if they changed the title, or if that’s editorialising here, but “bikes or cars” is a false dichotomy - bikes can’t single-handedly replace cars, because they take up much less space. In practice, it’s “bikes, parks, pedestrian areas, housing, terraces, etc, —or cars”.
They changed it
Good.
Cars are privilege and privilege is always exclusive.
Because space is limited, more so in 2D. As much as promoters want to promote incrementalism and fluffy upgrades that sound great, road (and parking) are limited, which means that they have to be rationed, or else you just allow the most privileged and powerful users to dominate.
I agree we need drastic changes in personal transportation but I think given the size of our current infrastructure dedicated to cars, there is room for significantly increased space for bicycles and pedestrians while maintaining a reduced network of roads for cars. Access to these roads could i.e. be limited to residents. It’s already commonplace that parking permits are only sold to residents. So why not car access in general? It would greatly reduce the need for car space.
I’m just saying that every bit of bandwidth will be fought over. It is a zero sum game at this level. There’s this marketing idea that car traffic will be less congested when people are using buses and bicycles, which is true, but it’s a perverse incentive. Promoting the idea still prioritizes cars and feed into the carbrain paradigm. For example, it’s a bad idea to “improve traffic” like that and allow drivers to speed more. Low speeds in cities are a good thing, and heavy traffic lowers speeds.
Especially considering that, in cities, it doesn’t really make sense to have multiple lanes in between traffic lights - it doesn’t actually speed up anyone’s trip. That’s a lot of free space ripe for the picking.
