Yep, I’m afraid that the post I put up yesterday was an April Fools joke. Sadly, Ostfildern isn’t planning to invest in cycling in the future, even though most of the measures described are already being used within about 10 kilometres of here. Obviously my piece was a bit subtle- the local paper was less so, having a front page headline about the Mayor resigning over daylight savings time.
But if I’d posted the real news you wouldn’t have believed it either: Stuttgart and Ostfildern plan to build a new €200m bypass underground with junctions serving various villages and smashing their way through several nature reserves. The paper reporting this said that the Green Party were against this because it “May generate more traffic”. I think they “May” be right there.
But that’s Ostfildern: never mind that our dependency on oil is killing people and sending us headlong into serious economic trouble when the stuff runs out, and never mind that the rest of Germany is waking up to the idea that we can’t keep building more rat runs:, or that the Neckar valley has the worst air quality in Germany (Way over the EU pollution limit) mostly because of motor vehicles. Here in Ostfildern we’re going to need more roads, roads, roads, for our fast cars and trucks.
What a depressing thought. The next post will be a bit lighter, I promise.
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April 2, 2009 at 6:38 pm
velochick
It is pretty depressing but thanks for reporting it on your blog, after all, that kind of news won’t be published in the International Section of the British newspapers (unless it is about Obama) even though we’re in Europe. We do need to hear about this stuff, even if is depressing. Living in Road Building Kent, they seem to think it is ‘the answer to everything’ but it is going backward.