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While other German cities have networks of cycle routes, cycle highways, and traffic calmed streets, Stuttgart has a couple of lanes here and there and a catastrophe of a website that gives the option a four lane highway or a magical mystery tour through a forest to a set of traffic lights that change every Tuesday.
So when the now Green Party dominated city government announced last week that they are considering a plan to improve the infrastructure in Stuttgart, with the goal that by 2020, 20% of all journeys will be by bike, people say things like “about time too” or “We’ll believe it when we see it” or most likely “Get out of the way of my Mercedes”.
As the local planners don’t seem to know what a bicycle looks like, the city commissioned a Herr. Dankmar Alrutz, from Hannover to do a report. He did something remarkable: he got on a bicycle with his team and tried out the infrastructure for himself.
And he’s not even Dutch.
He came back last week and told the city “beim Radverkehrsnetz besteht dringend Handlungsbedarf” which is German diplomatic for “It’s cr*p. Do something quickly.” He then gave a list of recommendations which some of his car-centric audience must still be recovering from:
- A network of 141km ‘main’ cycle routes that connect the centre with the surrounding area
- Another 100km of secondary cycle routes connecting the different areas in the city
- Signs showing cycle routes to be updated to modern standards. (Pointing them the right way would be a start.)
- Cycle lanes on the roads, but also some streets to be converted to cycle streets: cycles have right of way and cars are guests. This already happens a bit.
- Bikes to be carried on trams at all times -often people cycle into the city and use the tram home.
- Increase the stations for the successful Call-A-Bike bike share scheme and hurry up with the new scheme with bikes that have electric-assistance, because if you hadn’t noticed, Stuttgart is hilly.
Herr. Alrutz said that if Stuttgart invests about 1,8 million a year until 2020, ( Which is, let’s see, about the same as it would cost to build 1.5 kilometres of highway), they can create an environment where one in five people will ride a bike for transport. 20% of journeys by bike. Not for sport, but for everyday transport.
So far signs are encouraging: the worst that even the more right-wing CDU party could manage was to suggest a ‘pilot scheme’ for bike transport on buses. Perhaps someone should point out that there was already a very successful one in 2004.
Contraflow bike lane. Better than nothing-or is it?
I have a train to catch in Stuttgart, and being one for a bit of adventure I decide to go to the city by bike. Stuttgart isn’t known for being bike friendly, but there are at last two online route planning services, so I log onto both and see what happens. The results aren’t promising. The German cycle club planner apparently can’t tell difference between an bike lane and a heavily used urban road. Stuttgart city is slightly better, and suggests a pleasantly bucolic way through the forest and suburbs but warns the surface is gravel in some places: at least someone looked at it. I’m told to allow 45 minutes for this run, at 15km/h average speed.
Stuttgart is surrounded by steep wooded hills. The way to the city, therefore, is on forest roads: a mix of gravel and surfaced car-free streets. A complete lack of signposts though, so much consulting of map required. The route leads to a main road and here the problems begin. Further progress means crossing an unlovely 4-lane road and cars snarl past while pedestrians and cyclists wait for signals that change grudgingly after several minutes and then change back within seconds.
Between crossings and map reading stops -still no signs- I’m getting late, and the next bit doesn’t help either. It’s an indifferently surfaced forest trail, for 500m after which I need to re-cross the highway on it’s sinuous route down the hillside. This crossing has the centre reservation shaved to a fine point for the convenience of cars turning right, leaving a gap too short for a bike let alone the Xtracycle. Of course, the pedestrian lights trap me in the middle. A rush to the safety of the other side brings a short respite in the form of a contraflow on a one-way street, then yet another crossing -yup, same highway- with all the same features as before and some seriously impatient drivers. Then, like a mirage, a high-quality bike lane appears with its own lights and a red surface. Unfortunately it’s going in the wrong direction, and I’m left following a road with tram lines and parked cars and another minuscule bike lane that sends me off into some impenetrable suburbs, delaying me further.
This pattern continues all the way into the city: steep hills, busy junctions, no signs, and and a map that takes a perverse pleasure in sending me on left-hand turns across oncoming traffic. Eventually, after cycling through a dingy underpass and the city park, I climb up a delivery road and wind up at a sign saying „Welcome to Stuttgart railway station.“ It’s at the bottom of a row of steps, and by the time I get upstairs the train has gone.
Not the greatest introduction to cycling in Stuttgart, but the good news is that the Green Party have taken a lot of seats in the local elections: in other German cities where this took place, there has been a rapid change of transport policy afterwards, so hopefully they will begin to address these problems sharpish.
At the very least they may get some cyclists to test out the website and make reccomendations.
I could do it, for example, for a reasonable fee…
I can imagine the meeting where this was discussed:
“We need to add a few kilometres of bike lane to keep the greenies happy. Put a white line along this road here.”
“It’ll be tight with two-way traffic, can we make it one way?”
“No, that would slow down traffic.”
“Well, we’ll have to take out the parking”
“Don’t even think about it”
Pity the poor transport planner. There is no way you can fit traffic in both directions, and a cycle lane, and space for residents parking on a road this narrow without someone getting the short end of the arrangement, and naturally you can’t expect Mercedes Man to drive a detour of almost a hundred metres to make the street more liveable. There are similar cycle lanes in this part of Stuttgart, including about a kilometre of lanes, broken by roundabouts every two hundred metres, where the cycle lane stops abruptly, spitting you into traffic, and then starts again the other side.
On the other hand, the drivers I encountered seemed quite used to a bike riding outside of the bike lane, so I guess it’s normal for them. Stuttgart also does seem to have worked out that a red cycle lane – which is equivalent to a blue lane in Denmark, and gives bikes travelling along it priority at junctions- is a good thing to remind motorists that cyclists have right of way, which puts them a few decades ahead of Ostfildern.
I wrote this before we moved and planned to post automatically, typically, not only did that not happen, but Karl at Do The Right Thing beat me to it with with a more entertaining version in Edinburgh.
…this is wrong.
From the 2020 vision blog. By the way, the UKIP is the ‘United Kingdom Independence Party’:
The local Cambridge Cycling Campaign sent out a questionnaire to the local election candidates asking about their views on a selection of key cycle infrastructure/culture issues. Many did not bother to reply, of those that did, most were ‘political answers’, but the UKIP’s Peter Burkinshaw sums up White Van Man culture of the UK;
Q. Do you have any other general cycling-related comments or points?
A. “Provision for cyclists is already adequate. Please remember that motorists are the people who pay to use the roads whereas cyclists are “freeloaders”. They are entitled to use the roads but not disproportionately”.
“If everyone cycled, as you suggest, there would be no roads to ride on”.
Wow. Narrow, patronising, and based on complete twaddle from the frst sentence.
If motorists had to deal with roads that suddenly became narrower, went via a roundabout route, avoided where you wanted to go, were dangerous to use, or just stopped for no apparent reason, they would hardly call those “adequate”.
Motorists in the UK pay Vehicle Excise Duty, not road tax: The revenues go into the general government budget and are used as the government sees fit: roads are paid for out of the general public purse, which is funded by all taxes. So much for freeloading.
What is ‘disproportionate’ use of roads? Speeding? Congestion?
If everyone cycled, roads would last longer, be cleaner and more open and those who need to drive like emergency vehicles would be able to get where they need to go faster.
And I haven’t even started on indirect and healthcare costs.
After a couple of years racing about on a wooden push-along bike, Middle Son is graduating to his first pedal powered vehicle. He’s doing it in fits and starts at the moment, and when I put out traffic cones for him to ride around he spends more time playing games with the cones, but we’re getting there. He’s learning quickly because Eldest Son, who is just off frame, is acting as a pace car, so he has a target and an example. On the flip side he’s used to me driving him about on the Xtracycle so I think he’s reluctant to give that up.
- Adventure Awaits
Meanwhile Eldest Son is spreading his wings, getting faster and more confident, and wants to ride, ride, ride, (so as a ‘Good Dad’ I naturally have to ride with him) He’s really embraced the ‘bike as transportation’ idea, and I think he gets a kick out of turning up to his activities by bike. He isn’t alone any more though: now the weather is warmer many children are travelling by bike, often alone, to visit friends or relatives, play, have fun, or go to children’s activities: we we have severe bike congestion sometimes with bikes in the stands, up the sides and all over the lawns People saw the weather and came by bike. This isn’t in Ostfildern I would add: it’s in the next town where there is infrastructure for bikes.
There are lots of other changes on the horizon: as well as the house move there’s other stuff that is looking exciting, and I’m itching to blog about, but unfortunately all the preparation and organising is taking time that I’d otherwise use to write, which is slowing my posting rate down a bit: watch this cliche.
Infrastructure = Bikes. Simple
In a shock announcement this morning the town mayor outlined an ambitious plan to create a cycling network in Ostfildern. This is part of a local economic stimulus package aimed at creating jobs and setting the economy on a sustainable footing.
The statement from the mayors office read: “It is becoming clear that giving cars priority simply reduces the quality of life for all, while encouraging people to use alternative transport forms has been shown to help improve living standards in towns, drive down healthcare costs and increase the profits of local businesses.”
Among the main measures are priority for bicycles at intersections, a marked cycle network running through all the parts of the town, red cycle lanes giving bikes priority on side roads, resurfacing existing routes between parts of the town, bicycle lockers at metro stations, and two bays given over to cycle use in the main underground garages.
Speaking at the presentation the Major said: “We realised that to continue with ‘business as usual’ would simply lead to more congestion, so we decided that we need to think more carefully about how we want transport and our lifestyles to look in 20 years time. ”
While the possibility of high oil prices and congestion were a factor the major said simple common sense had driven the programme: “For a tiny investment, we can accommodate far more people, and at a fraction of the cost of providing infrastructure for cars, while making life better for everyone. We want children in Ostfildern to be able to cycle to school without fear, and breathe fresh air, not sit in cars stuck in traffic or play indoors for fear of the fumes. It’s remarkable that this took so long.”
Work is expected to begin in Summer.
Bike as transport in Ostfildern
On another Father and Son bike ride last week we passed through the ‘new’ part of Ostfildern where there has been a bit more thought than usual given to making it for people and not for cars. It’s still not brilliant, but even with this token effort there are far more bikes. While some probably only go out every second weekend in summer, many are clearly used for daily transport, like this one, which had clearly just come back from a ride with the kids, maybe to the shops which are only a kilometre away.
This is the only part of the Ostfildern where there are segregated cycleways within the town, but to reach the shops in this planned and allegedly ’sustainable settlement’ you need to cross a busy road, and lock your bike to a railing or a hopelessly inadequate and often uncovered Sheffield stand.
Yet even this minimal cycling infrastructure, a few routes that are safe for children to ride on without adults supervising them, and a handful of places where cars have to drive slowly, and people ride for transport. The evidence is here, right in front of us, so when will Ostfildern start getting serious about cycling and see what some real infrastructure achieves?
Er...
Well, there’s always one, isn’t there? And here’s ours, where the cycleway to the next town crosses a road at a 90 degree angle. The sign under the red ‘Give way/Yield’ triangle says “Cyclists Dismount”. Yeah right. I don’t know if you noticed, but this is a road. And last time I looked a bicycle was considered to be a road vehicle under German law.
Following this instruction would waste my time and put me in danger. The cycleway on the other side follows an access road into a sport centre, so instead of moving with the traffic and pulling off to the cycleway within a few seconds, I’d have to stop on the road to remount my bike, right where cars will be pulling in. I don’t think so.
It’s typical of Ostfildern that they have this silly sign instead of a proper crossing for bikes, but fortunately it’s the sole example I’ve found so far.
Sometimes I need a bit of a shock to remind me that no matter how lukewarm Ostfildern manages to be, no matter how reluctant to improve cycling infrastructure, or even reign in cars a bit, it could be worse. Fortunately Karl at Do The Right Thing provided just such a shock with this video of a local bike lane, which managed to be a mere 10 Metres long and includes a kerb in that distance. Unfortunately this sort of half-hearted and dangerous cycle lane is fairly normal from experience in the UK.
Monty Python couldn’t improve on that one…
Revolutions
January 30, 2009 in Bike facilities (or lack thereof), Environment, Integrated Transport, Public Transport, Trenchant comments about cars | Leave a comment
Out with the old. About time...
On my first visit to Germany I stayed at Esslingen-Am-Neckar, in the valley of the Neckar river. At the time, the town was still pretty car-dominated: The bus and rail stations exuded shabbiness: the station in particular was a rather dingy hole: my main memory of it was the darkness cast by an ugly canopy grafted onto the formerly grand building. The station was fronted by a busy road, so pedestrians and cyclists had to scuttle across as and when they could. The bus station was in a similar state, and likewise cut off from the town, while people driving could park under the centre, which gave a clear message about the value of people who came by public transport. On the other hand the bus and trains ran on time and were integrated with through ticketing, and a large part of the old city was pedestrianised, which put the town many years ahead of the UK at the time.
Main road will soon go to the extreme left of this picture. (Note new, cleared, cycleway in foreground)
Since then vehicles have been largely banned from the high street and several side roads have been blocked and turned into mostly pedestrianised areas. Now the gradual improvement has reached the railway station. The road which currently blights the front of the station will be moved between the building and the railway track ie: out of the way, leaving the was clear for people and bikes to get to the network of pedestrianised roads in the centre. Obviously this will make a lot of space available, and this will become a large square (ie: space for people) with a new bus station.
Bad picture of future open space/bus station.
In the first week of January, the diggers were already at work demolishing the old buildings, and to my lasting satisfaction, the canopy has been partially removed which has made a dramatic difference to the station building. There’s already more infrastructure and bike parking (And I’ll blog about that sometime), and of course bikes are allowed into the centre of the town while cars have to skirt around the outside for the most part, so the future of pedal power looks good.
Hopefully the politicians of Ostfildern are taking notice. I’ll keep taking pictures as the work continues.