In the 1970′s Freiburg decided to encourage people to use public transport, walk ,or cycle, and to make it difficult to drive into the city. In the centre they closed a large area to cars and built tram lines which could take people right into the main shopping streets, and built a network of cycle lanes and other facilities. I can can report that the sky has not fallen, nor has the centre of the city become a wasteland.
On the other hand…
…there were lots of bikes…
…and cyclists…
And very little traffic.
In fact, the whole experience of walking in this city was far more pleasant than in our village.
Now there’s a coincidence.
Apparently the modal share of bikes in Freiburg is 27%, Not bad considering that Freiburg is right on the edge of the Black Forest, which is a Very Hilly Place. For comparison ‘driving a car’ is given as 26%, ‘car passenger’ as a paltry 6% and public transport covers 20%.
I asked David Hembrow when the Dutch City of Assen made the same policy decisions as Freiburg and the current modal share for bicycles. It turns out the main change was in the 1970′s and 80′s, and today bicycles have a modal share of 41%.
The coincidences just pile up, don’t they?
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January 15, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Kim
Why is it that so many town planners think that the sky will fall and the world stop spinning if the dare to stop people from driving into town centres? All the evidence from places like Freiburg (and a lot of others) is that it simply makes the town a nicer place to live, work and shop in. Why can’t town planners simple take an evidence based approach, rather repeating the same mistakes which have been shown to fail everywhere, such as predict and build for the car…
January 16, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Andy in Germany
Hi Kim: I have asked one of our town councilors that very question. His reply will form the basis of a future blog post as it was so incredible.
BTW Thanks for tweeting this post…
January 15, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Katja Leyendecker
The coincidences just pile up and the evidence is mounting into a big mountain of truth. It seems UK decision-makers are not interested in the truth or maybe they just don’t like climbing any mountains…
January 16, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Andy in Germany
Hello Katja, thanks for the comment…
I think it’s more that they’re afraid of losing votes from the rabid Daily Mail 4×4 crowd. It strikes me the’re making more trouble for themselves the way they’re going as said people won’t be very forgiving if and when they can’t keep the current scheme going any longer, but there you go.
I notice you’re in Newcastle, by the way. I guess you know Karl Mccracken over in North Tyneside? I was in Newky last year: I can see the point about cycling there…
January 15, 2011 at 6:28 pm
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amsterdamize. Amsterdamize said: RT @kim_harding: http://to.ly/9kXC Freiburgize! In the 1970′s Freiburg decided to encourage people to use public transport, walk or cycl … [...]
January 15, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Marco
@Kim. It is the paradigm they are 1) educated in and 2) grown up in. The current generation planners are the people that in in the 60s and 70s had a dream growing up: owning a car! And we destroyed half countries to facilitate this dream. Let’s face it, these people with these dreams are still in power (And are still planning educators). Luckily, 2011 is the year most of them will turn 65 and stop working (at least in Netherlands: baby boom). Turning around this strong paradigm is much tougher than it seems.
January 16, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Andy in Germany
Hello Marco…
I think you’re right: we talk about ‘car culture’ but I don’t think we realise how powerful a culture can be, and how it can affect us in many tiny ways we think and work, so behaviour that we would see as unacceptable in say, an office, it fine when the person doing it happens to be sitting in a metal box. I’m trying to reeducate myself to an understanding that inconsiderate drivers aren’t just fools, but simply working inside a cultural box that I’m seeing from the outside. Of course the reverse it also true: things I see as normal in my cycling cultural box are seen as unacceptable by drivers…
Thanks for the retweet by the way…
January 16, 2011 at 1:02 am
the big smile
Well, I saw how they started to block to block the town centre of Erlangen / Germany back in the late 70′ties. The shop-owners were afraid of loosing customers, because costumers weren’t allowed to park in front the shop anymore.
But it turned out to be the opposite!
@ Marco.
Our post reminded me of a text I came across:
http://rauchen.gmxhome.de/zigarettenkirchechomsky/auto_mann.htm
These people, that had a dream in the 60′ties and 70′ties of owning a car….
And I saw a clip in TV about cars and how they take influence on us.
i wrote a short post on my blog about it:
http://yuba-mundo.blogspot.com/2011/01/virus-auto.html
And by the way, Marco, I think it is interesting, that these “old” planners become 65 and stop working in 2011. One year later is the year, in with the Mayans said, the word would completely change!
(No, they did not said, the world would end!)
January 16, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Andy in Germany
Re: Erlangen: I’ve pointed this out to councillors here, but they just say it wouldn’t work here because we have several small centres in what were once villages. This of course is the local government version of putting your fingers in your ears and shouting “I can’t hear you!”. It was at this point I realised they don’t want to reduce car supremacy here having worked very hard to achieve it. There’ll be future blog post on that as well…
January 16, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Frits B
Freiburg is about 4 times the size of Assen, which is a very quiet place (guess why I live there). A better object of comparison might be Groningen: c. 190,000 population, university so lots of students > bicycles, and a very rigorous city council which virtually closed the inner city off in the 1970s (under much protest against “those socialist tyrants”). Do you know this publication?
http://www.fietsberaad.nl/index.cfm?lang=nl&repository=Fietsberaad+publication+7+als+dochter+van+de+nederlandse+versie
It also features Freiburg.
January 16, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Andy in Germany
Hi Frits, I just chose Assen because I knew I could get the figures from David quickly (I’m lazy, in other words) but it’s interesting to see a comparable sized city. I still think Geography will be a major factor though: Freiburg is hard against some serious hills.
Thanks for the link: that’ll give me something to read at bedtime
January 17, 2011 at 11:05 am
David Hembrow
FWIW, the physical size, land area, of Assen and Groningen are almost exactly the same. However, the population of Groningen is about 3x that of Assen.
As Frits says, Assen is relatively “sleepy”. That’s why we live here too, it’s very nice, and very green.
The contrast between here and Groningen is quite interesting. Assen doesn’t have the huge student population of Groningen – something which adds loads of people of an ideal demographic to be cyclists, so makes a huge difference to cycle rates, and the council has done less to restrict cars. Nevertheless, people cycle in Assen more than they do in any city in any other country – including flat places with lots of students, higher density and warmer climate.
It’s a given that any Dutch city will have a significant cycling rate, including those in hilly parts.
January 17, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Andy in Germany
We seem to have a strong correlation between Students and cycle infrastructure here as well.
I agree with you that the deciding factor is infrastructure: the evidence for that is very clear. The trouble is that infrastructure needs to take the terrain into account. Maastricht is possibly hilly for the Netherlands, but it’s not in the same league as (for example) Stuttgart where about 200 streets end in steps and we have a rack railway running from one of the central squares in the city. I’m not arguing that Stuttgart, especially central Stuttgart doesn’t desperately need infrastructure, or that they could have a lot more cycling if they built more, but there would need to be infrastructure which takes the terrain into account, or we’ll end up with an isolated pocket of bike lanes in the centre and none feeding in from the edge.
Freiburg is similar to Maastricht despite the hills flanking the city, but unfortunately they have limited powers to get cycle lanes out of the city itself, so people from the outer suburbs could end up with a situation where there’s a great traffic free cycle lane right until the edge of Freiburg, and then 7,5km from the centre they’re dumped on a main road. I’d be interested to see the figures for where all the cars on the ring road and in the car parks in Freiburg came from: I’d be willing to bet they are mostly from these nearby towns.
Of course a lot of this is conjecture so I’l leave it at that. My concern is that in (rightly) asserting that we need infrastructure to encourage cycling, we remember that the infrastructure suitable for one city isn’t going to be as effective in another.
We are all prisoners of our Geography, however much things like cars may make us feel otherwise.
January 17, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Frits B
Re. “flat”: the Fietsberaad report says about Freiburg (on page 99):
.
“90% of the inhabitants live within a 7.5 km radius of the market with its gothic cathedral. This is where most jobs are found as well. In addition the terrain is flat, so excellent conditions for bicycle use.”
Looks like Mexico City, on its crater floor, then
January 17, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Andy in Germany
Those figures make me think the Fietsberaad probably use the official ‘city’ boundary, which is very small. There are a lot of smaller towns and village outside of this area which had a lot of autonomy in Germany. Unfortunately from my limited traveling I got the impression they are a lot less enthusiastic about providing infrastructure which is a shame because they are mostly on the flat Rhine plain. Freiburg itself is where a very narrow valley meets the Rhine so on Google Maps it looks like a ‘T’ on its side squeezed between the hills.