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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.
Bristol (UK) has just become the first city in the country to start a bike share scheme, and it’s getting all manner of flak for it. The main argument against seems to be that “Bristol is hilly” which is hardly an astute observation if you’ve ever been there, but apparently a shock to journalists from London.
Germany has several bike share schemes: I know this will annoy the French, but several cities in Germany had quietly embraced the idea years before it caught on in Paris. Stuttgart, which is possibly even more hilly than Bristol, has a successful bike share system run by German Railways (Deutsche Bahn, or DB). The ‘Call-a-bike’ network was launched in 2007 with 400 bikes at somewhere between 50-65 hubs around the city depending on who you ask. It works using mobile phones which has the advantage that they know who is using any bike at any time, Despite this Stuttgart is fussy about you bringing the bike back to the hub you got it from, but on the other hand the first half hour is free. The system has been an instant success and it’s been was expanded since it opened. (I guess that’s where the different numbers come from, so much for Teutonic accuracy).
Stuttgarts traffic is probably a bit safer for cycling than Bristols, but we also have tramlines on a number of streets, and other streets that are so steep they give up and become staircases. So can Stuttgarters handle hills better than Bristolians? I doubt it, especially after a few beers. The major difference in the two systems is the numbers of bikes. Stuttgart has 400 bikes in 60 Hubs. Now Wikipedia says the centre of Stuttgart (where the bikes are) is home to 590 497 people (or at least, it was on the first of June 2008). My maths is a bit fuzzy but I think that works out as a bit less that one bike per 1500 people living the centre. And you thought talking about bike parts was as boring as I can get.
‘Hourbike‘, Bristol’s foray into the brave new world of bike share, involved much fanfare and eighteen bikes in four stations. Yes you did read that correctly. Eighteen. According to Wikipedia and my fuzzy maths, if the population of central Bristol all decided to join, over 23000 people would be lining up for each bike. That’s bad enough, but the four locations don’t include the main railway station. Now call me obtuse, but if I was going to make a bike share system, I’d make darn sure it feeds the main public transport hubs. Last time I was in Stuttgart I found four hubs of about twenty bikes around the main station in the city, or to put it another way, more bikes than serve the whole city of Bristol, and there’s still 61 hubs elsewhere.
Bristol has a chance to prove everyone wrong and become a flagship city like Paris -and for the record, I hope they do- if it starts taking it seriously and stops faffing about. To get the same ratio as Stuttgart only requires 300 bikes, give or take, and perhaps a lot of publicity, and you have a prestige project begging for a politician to sponsor it. Any takers?
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…
Low point.
It’s tax time in Germany, which means that the ranks of the self employed have been carefully getting our information ready for the tax office, or in my case putting it off as long as possible. Most people will post their taxes off but I decided to take mine this year. I like to be sure the paperwork is with the tax advisor and isn’t in a sorting office in Ulm, and South Germany has a relational culture so it’s good to connect with people. The fact it gave me a good reason for a bike ride on a sunny day is entirely irrelevant.
I had to go through Hohenheim, which as I’ve said before, is the other side of a deep valley. I know some readers envy the hills, but the problem is that when you go down, you have to go back up, and in this case, it’s straight back up. Mind you, this time I was able to winch up without wondering if my lungs would explode, so I think I may be getting fitter.
The tax advisors office is stuck around the back of a delivery entrance, and the front has a slightly down at heel look, as if the door will be opened by a gentleman in a trench coat saying: “Mr. Tortellini is unavailable”, and the sounds of someone getting beaten up in the back room, but unfortunately for the purposes of a good story nothing of the sort happened. I dropped off the tax forms, spoke briefly with the tax advisor and as I wasn’t feeling up to a climb up the 25% hill back home, continued towards Stuttgart.
Möhringen-the future is easy.
In Germany there’s relatively little sprawl, which can throw up surprises: you’re minding your own business riding along a forest trail which could easily be on the edges of the Black Forest, and then suddenly a you look left and across the valley there’s a glass and concrete skyscraper looking like that mysterious monolith out of ‘2001, Space Odyssey’, and then you turn a corner and you’re in a large town. It happens all the time, and it happened to me on this occasion: I turned a corner and there was the town of Möhringen. and suddenly I’m surrounded by high-rise buildings, lines of taxis and expensive suits -even a casino. The cycleway leads directly into the centre of the town and the metro station, which is a hub for metro trains serving this side of Stuttgart. Möhringen has caught up with the notion that public transport and bikes are a vital part of keeping the cities liveable and the Metro/bus station is in a pedestrianised area with cars restricted but a place for buses and taxis right by the station. There’s fair bit of free bike parking here, and shared use cycle/pedestrian ways cutting through the buildings. The air is clean, the roads are safe, and as I realised when I took some of this picture, it was so quiet that even with thousands of people passing by, I could hear the birds singing in the trees: It was like one of those utopian “Cities of the future” pictures from the 60’s, only with kebab stands. I don’t like cities, so I probably won’t move house and live there, but the next time someone starts saying how difficult it is to make a city people friendly, I’ll take them to Möhringen.
Integrated infrastructure in Stuttgart. Behind me, the cycleway is seperated from the footpath.
According to the local free paper (I know, I could put a sticker on the letter box so I don’t get it any more, but it’s good for lining the compost bin) Light Rapid Transit is in fashion at the moment with city authorities: in Germany alone Bremen, Düsseldorf Erfurt, Gera Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart are currently expanding their systems, and Frankfurt am Main, Jena, Kassel, Munich, Freiburg im Breisgau, and and Augsburg are making plans to do the same. Ulm currently has only one metre gauge line but is considering adding more.
Stuttgart has now almost completely finished the process of converting from the old metre gauge system which used GT trams from the 1950s, to a standard gauge ‘Stadtbahn’ with barrier-free access at most stations. This, on top of free off-peak bike transport has endeared the new units to me despite replacing the attractive old units which were full of character, but draughty, noisy and and featured street-level access up three steps.
As part of the rebuilding many sections of the line were rebuilt either on their own alignment or with priority over other traffic, so there is now much less street running, and in some cases the Stadtbahn is faster and more direct than driving, and you don’t get delayed by traffic jams- I’ve had one three minute delay in four years: how many car drivers can claim that? In places where the track now runs underground, people and bikes were given more space.
Best of all, the system can now (just) accommodate an Xtracycle, which is very good for the rare occasions I’m forced to go to Stuttgart and get anything. I can cycle in, and around the city pretty well exclusively on cycleways, and catch a tram home as long as I don’t decide to do it in the rush hour (although I can still use the rack railway then). I just have to find a station at street level, because I can’t fit the Xtra into a lift.
In fact, the only real gap in this excellent network is in my own village, but it is comforting to know that the rest of the country is waking up to the idea that not everyone wants to use cars. Perhaps with all this cycling infrastructure on their doorstep, our local councillors may notice soon.
A real bike lane
A few days ago I was commenting on the huge difference in bike facilities between our home town of Ostfildern, and our neighbouring town of Sillenbuch, and how, in contrast to the busy street that faces cyclists here, the town has made sure that there is a direct cycle route running to the centre.
So what lies at end? A shopping centre that allows bikes to ride through, and a wide, segregated cycle lane, off the street and inside of parked cars. Who would have thought it? To be fair the town had an advantage here. There used to be a double track tramway along the middle of this street, but the tram was rebuilt as a Stadtbahn (metro) a few years ago and pushed underground. Faced with a sudden increase in available space, the council quite intelligently made a dramatically widened area for pedestrians and bikes: I can only imagine the the annoyance of motorists who were expecting an extra lane or two to race down to Stuttgart.
(Mostly) bike friendly shopping centre.
The shopping centre isn’t bad either. I dislike shopping, which is why I end up doing it. The logic behind this is that if I go, I get what I need and go home as fast as possible, whereas if my wife goes she looks around and finds other things -usually chocolate- so it’s cheaper for her to send me. At least I think that’s the reason. The centre used to do the normal thing of banning people from riding bikes, which is understandable but annoying, but recently sanity prevailed and they let us in, which I imagine has boosted sales, judging by the number of bikes outside some shops. Unfortunately so far there’s not much to lock a bike onto, unless you count the portable wheel manglers put out by local shops. I quickly realised the Xtracycle is heavier than the racks, so now I use the stainless steel trolley racks that are firmly bolted to the ground.
Now, why can’t our village catch up? Surely it makes sense economically: if people don’t feel safe to ride they’ll walk or drive. If they drive they are as likely to go here as come to our centre, because there are more shops. Installing cycle lanes in Ostfildern would reduce pollution, and make it easier for people to shop within the village.
Bike lane in Sillenbuch
I’ve mentioned before that our home town of Ostfildern isn’t part of Stuttgart. To officially be in the city, you have to ride across a couple of fields and a small stream before you reach the outer suburbs at a place called Sillenbuch. But once across the stream, suddenly it’s a whole new world. We don’t have much cycling infrastructure in Ostfildern at all, and what we do have is often ’shared space’: probably better than nothing but motorists still assume you’ll just move out of the way. The favoured method here is to direct cyclists onto less busy roads, (ie, get them out of the way) which is fine until you want to go to the centre by bike. I suspect this is a legacy of our former mayor. It remains to be seen if the present one will think otherwise.
If he wants ideas, our mayor need look no further than Sillenbuch, which is much more enlightened. They have an advantage because a lot of the town is fairly new, but they’ve thought a bit about what they’re doing and made the development more people friendly with a network of routes for walking and cycling, and less direct ways for cars. For example, this is the route through the town goes from the edge to the centre, and is completely separated from the local roads. It’s shared use with pedestrians. I think splitting it would be more sensible, but I’ve not had any problems with this and it beats racing trucks down our narrow main road. The path winds so you don’t drive fast, and has islands like these to slow you down without reducing visibility. I don’t know if I’m supposed to keep right. I generally do that anyway- it’s fun.
The main entrance to all the local apartments open here, not onto the street, so children can run over to the playground without fear of being run over, and old people potter along happily. People feel safe, and as David Hembrow points out, helping people feel safe is vital to getting people on their bikes. But you don’t just feel safe on a bike- the number of children running about, people walking the dog and other cyclists lends the place a bustling, friendly air that a street with traffic rushing along can’t match.
But what happens when you get through this? Do you get dumped on a busy road? No you don’t. I’ll tell you about that later.
Bad picture of bike service station
I’ve had a cold for a couple of days so I’ve not been feeling up to much cycling or writing, but a couple of days ago the local transport authority had their 30th anniversary on my birthday, and just for this I got free travel on their network for the day. I happened to go through Vaihingen, which is a part of Stuttgart, where I passed this rather innovative micro business run by the Diakonie, the charitable arm of the Lutheran Church. They offer bike care, parking, maintenance and hire. The sign says it’s there to create jobs for people, something which bike industries would seem very suited to. Even better, they’re located right in the middle of the bus/tram/S-Bahn interchange.
Seeing this and the network of bike routes near the station made me wonder if I’m being a bit hard on Stuttgarts’ cycling facilities. Although we live very close to the city, we aren’t officially a part of it, and it’s possible that I’ve been unfairly judging them on the basis of the (lack of) bike facilities in our village. This a wouldn’t be a surprise: towns are pretty autonomous as regards their own infrastructure so it’s common for one town to have great cycling facilities, which then stop abruptly at the edge. It could be that we simply landed in a more traditional town. I’ll keep an eye out for this and report on what I find.
Of course that means more cycling. It’s a tough life.
Stuttgart tram. Pre-Xtracycle M-trax on the bike wagon
I really like Stuttgart, which is odd, because I’m not a city person. I think it’s because it is small. The city is hemmed in by very steep wooded hills on three sides, even standing in the centre of the Schlossplatz, you can reach dense woodland in 15 minutes. I also find it rather endearing that despite doing it’s level best to look like it’s all chic and cool, it’s pretty eccentric a lot of the time.
It also has a rack railway which will carry your bike up out of the valley for the price of a normal ticket. I’m really keen on this as it means I avoid climbing up a 17% gradient at the end of the day when I’ve got stuff on the Xtracycle. Instead I can drive my bike on the wagon, wrap it thoroughly with a bungee and when the driver finishes his cigarette he gets on board and drives off. In some parts of the world -where I grey up, for example- the idea of people being trusted to get on a wagon and secure their own bike to it would be treated with great suspicion. I would probably have to wait in a queue for the Official Loader Of Bikes to do it for you, sign an indemnity and get a receipt to present to the Official Unloader Of Bikes at the top station, which of course would make the whole thing much slower and uneconomical. Fortunately in Stuttgart -and Germany as a whole- we still hold on to the eccentric idea that people are quite capable of looking after themselves, and people can cycle into the city and take the tram back up the hill without someone telling them what to do.
[Updated and corrected 29/09/2008 -thanks to James for pointing out the mistake...]
Sow roads, reap traffic
May 30, 2009 in Environment, General musings while dodging traffic, Germany, Ostfildern, Stuttgart, Transport, Trenchant comments about cars | Tags: Ostfildern | 4 comments
I’ve mentioned before that there is a harebrained scheme in the offing to lay yet more tarmac on the fields by our village, and last week there was an information evening where a local traffic planner was giving us details of what they were going to do. I naturally felt I had to go: I’m a local resident with children, I had a duty to both of my readers to blog about it and besides, there may be food
Some background may be needed here. We live in a fairly small village just outside of Stuttgart which happens to be between an Autobahn to the south and a port and industrial centre to the North. There is a bypass to the east and west, but we still have a lot of traffic through the village (about 13500 cars and 1500 trucks every 24 hours). Almost everyone wants a bypass because they believe it will ‘finally’ solve the problem. Like the last one was supposed to. And the one before that. It never does because traffic expands and contracts to fill the available space. Naturally the Strassenbauamt (Road building ministry) are aware of this but keep quiet about it.
While almost everyone wants the bypass, no-one wants it going past their house, and I don’t blame them. So now there is a new scheme being proposed by Stuttgart. They are offering to build a nice new road under the village to connect to one of the existing bypasses. This will take the traffic well away from the village and the noise, and no-one will have their view spoiled.
This is marsh gas. Absolute, 100% unadulterated cobblers. Anyone capable of walking erect should smell a king-sized rat when Stuttgart offers to build something for Ostfildern. Why would a city offer to spend taxpayers money on an infrastructure project in another administrative district? The answer is geography. There’s a major intersection of north-south and east-west autobahns, to the South West of Stuttgart used by a lot of traffic, but also a lot of traffic from the North-west going to the South East. This traffic has to curve around three sides of Stuttgart and climb a major hill. For about 20 years the Strassenbauamt has been quietly working on a plan for a bypass to the east of Stuttgart avoiding the hill, and it’s a section of this road that will go under our village. In other words, the road isn’t a bypass for us, but for Stuttgart, under this village.
Unfortunately, they’ve done their spin well: the notion is fixed in people’s minds that we need a bypass.
The economy is now going fast down the toilet, and the transport industry is going with it. As the majority of the traffic is cars, and about half of that is internal traffic, we could reduce traffic in the village simply by making less parking spaces and more bike infrastructure, because traffic expands and contracts to fit the space available… but I’m being rational, and using science which isn’t going to get me anywhere in this debate.
Not that any of this matters, because despite the huff and puff, no-one has yet committed to the €20-30 billion that this white elephant will cost, so I suspect it’ll be a while before any diggers turn up, but rest assured the Strassenbauamt is out there somewhere, building pointless roads to link up their fantasy network…
Freiburg looks ever more attractive…