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I knew I should have written this post earlier: Christoph Chorherr’s German language blog recently linked to a survey of the residents residents of Floridsdorf, a car-free section of Vienna which was built about ten years ago, to see how the place was getting along. I was going to read the report a couple of times then impress you all by telling you about it, but I’ve been busy lazy over the last week and the highly readable “Cycling is good for you” blog got there first with a great translation and summary, and a vast amount of ‘further information’ links all of which you can read by clicking on this link. Go on. I’ll still be here when you’re finished.
Welcome back. By now you’ll have worked out that Floridsdorf was planned carefully: it’s not just about not having parking, but a whole different approach to mobility and livability. It’s also good to persuade people not to get a car and park it around the corner on the sly. I especially love the idea of the shared spaces, so instead of the rich people living on top in a penthouse flat with their own pool, the pool is shared by everyone, as are the community gardens, workshops, and other facilities.
Yet whenever this sort of thing is proposed, it’s accused of ‘Social Engineering’. or worse. It seems that making public transport available or a building a walkable neighbourhood is ‘forcing’ people to live a certain way, instead of allowing people the choice of living how they want, and apparently that’s mile after mile of car-dominated sprawl, which where residents choose to be forced to own an expensive car or be sentenced to virtual imprisonment in in the suburbian gulag. Of course all those people driving require more roads: , so we “choose” to make cities car friendly, and the people who live in them have streets polluted and clogged by car traffic, because that’s What People Want: and forcing them to live otherwise would be ’social engineering’ after all. Get off my car yer socialist.
One thing: I don’t see one of these around Floridsdorf or Vauban to keep the discontented masses or from leaving. In fact as Anna of “Cycling is good for you” attests, free apartments in Floridsdorf are almost impossible to get hold of because of the high demand. Hmm… Perhaps ‘What People Want’ is a bit more a case of ‘Not wanting to change’.
Either way those pesky socially engineered places are catching on. Vauban caused a little stir a few months ago on the Blogosphere, but very similar schemes exist or are being planned in a few places- Amsterdam has one just around the corner from Henry’s workbikes, Düsseldorf and Tübingen are planning similar and there’s a brand new one in Köln, just off our route along the Rhine. Perfect for a visit in fact, so we’re going to drop by and see what it’s really like.
I’ll let you know if they have to surround the place with Razor Wire and hunt down escapees trying to breathe the heady exhaust-tinged air of suburbia.
Watch me get scooped on this one.
Long frustrating Monday morning trying to organise our route from Amsterdam and all the stuff included, and incidentally get ready for Japan. Finished with a short bike ride on the Xtracycle with our neighbours little boy on the back, giggling for he was worth.
My one English lesson at the moment is on Monday afternoon. Martin, my ’student ‘, is a tad older than me. He’s a thoughtful man, editor of a national newspaper for the Forestry industry which is at the meeting point of industry and conservation and has a lot of knowledge and understanding of ecology and the ecological movement in a German context. His English is better than he thinks, and we usually spend 45 minutes talking about ecology and related matters and I get paid for correcting the occasional error. I’m not complaining, especially as he comes up with some pretty deep ideas.
For example, I’ve always seen environmental concerns as looking after the land, but as Martin points out, there isn’t any truly ‘natural’ land left in Germany, (or as he puts it: ‘There isn’t a square metre of the country that hasn’t been dug up at some time or other’.) He thinks that when many people talk of conserving the natural landscape, they mean preserving a culture they remember from their childhood. He’s not criticising this, in fact he sees it as important because if we lose this part of our culture as our lives become focused on cities, people lose touch with the land, and ultimately with their roots. It reminds me of Japan, where mass rural-urban migration has left dozens of forgotten farms in the jungles, and whole mountains are removed to make way for cities to expand because people don’t value the land except in economic terms.
On the other hand, I can’t help feeling that as soon as we start trying to preserve a culture we could be killing it, not letting it develop or change. We need to keep the rural areas alive and we’re looking at how we can do this as a family of artists. We’re looking at how we can live off-grid (Independent of mains and water) and learning about Permaculture farming, which could be a further development of our personal connection with the land.
We’re engrossed in the conversation when he suddenly realises he has to go and get his daughter from school. Leaving the house I become aware that my link with nature is calling urgently so I make a minor detour into the fields before riding home.
Once home I help wrestle the boys into bed, but it’s still daylight and warm, and youngest son keeps coming out to play. The day ends with me alternately shooing him back to bed and reading to the accompaniment of our neighbour playing Lloyd-Webber songs on their piano.
Bakfiets in Amsterdam. Image credit: Amsterdamize
It’s nearly a year since we sat at a computer, looked at each other, took a deep breath and clicked our commitment to buy an Xtracycle free radical kit to fit onto my Raleigh mountainbike. My goodness, but I’m glad we did. We’ve answered our main question of „will we use it?“: the rebuilt bike and us have covered at least 1800km since then and it’s pressed into service at least once a day for shopping, carrying arts materials, picking up the boys, and a lot of other things.
So it’s time for the next stage of living and working car-free: last week in a slightly deja-vu moment, I sat at the computer again and ordered a Bakfiets from Henry’s Work Cycles in Amsterdam. Anyone from Amsterdam will be saying: „er… so what?“ right now, as these are essentially the family saloon in many cities in the Netherlands. For everyone else, hopefully the picture gives a clear idea of what we’re getting.
This gives us even more possibilities than the Xtracycle: my wife can ride it, for one, and in normal clothes, as we really don’t do lycra. We can fit all three boys in at a pinch, maybe even take the neighbours kids to Kindergarten with us, and we’re getting one with rain cover so at least the passengers/shopping will stay dry. It’ll also become a transport for work: it’s amazing how many bits of theatre equipment you can schlepp by pedal power
The real challenge is how to get it to Stuttgart: a Bakfiets is about 2.80m (roughly 8′) long, so it’s not going to fit into a rental car. We could have it delivered but it would cost a further €700, so instead I’ve come up with a cunning plan to ride to Stuttgart from Amsterdam. Unfortunately I can’t pretend this makes me incredibly fit, as we’ll be riding at a relaxed place and following a well used bike route along the Rhine, but with a climb of 380m and about 650km door-to door it’s going to be a challenge.
On top of this we’re hoping to make a film: I’ve managed to interest a producer I worked with previously, and he’s taking on the idea as a challenge. We’re following three rivers, the Rhine, the most important river in western Europe, then the Neckar, and finally a tiny river called the Körsch. Each river has affected people down the ages to today- we’re following them because they make the easiest route through the hills- and in turn, each has been affected forr good and bad by the people living along them. Cycling along the rivers will give us a unique perspective on them and the people alongside them.
Are we going to make it cycling/filming/getting home in time? It’s a bit late to ask as I’ve already ordered the bike, and we have tickets for the sleeper train to Amsterdam. We’ll arrive there on September the third…
There’s been a lot of blog-based discussion of This article in the New York Times about the car-free suburb of Vauban in Freiburg, which I’m all for: much as I moan about how hopeless Ostfildern is, I live in Germany because I love the country, so it’s good to see some all-too-rare positive reporting about Germany in an English language newspaper, and with a slide show, no less. Mind you, they really should have checked their facts: Vauban isn’t just an ‘Affluent Suburb’ but has different income groups (It just looks affluent because it’s pleasant), and a sign showing a bike and ‘Frei’ written underneath actually means bikes are permitted, but there we go.
I’ve not been able to post about it as quickly as I’d like, but on the other hand I can now include this video of the place and its place in Freiburg as a whole, along with an interview with the mayor, who is part of the Green Party, about how they have worked to make Freiburg a more sustainable/pleasant/livable city.
(Thanks to ‘Cycling is good for you’ for the video)
Ostfildern had the opportunity to do the same, but of course decided to build a new road and make it easy to drive through, but it does at least show that when we do this sort of thing in Germany, we do it well.
Vauban’s English-language website, showing their aims and ideas is here.
Cycleway in the Black Forest: It's tougher than you think...
Hills are on my mind at the moment, specifically the one where this sign is planted between Neuenbürg and Waldrennach in the northern end of the Black Forest.
Cycling has a pretty meagre travel share in this region. It isn’t helped by variable quality of cycle paths, but a major obstacle is Geography, (To be more accurate, Geology, but if I’d said that you’d have switched off straight away) The Black Forest is a series of hills with deep gorges slicing through them. For various reasons of interest to geographers and virtually no-one else, this makes most villages are either long and thin in the valleys or small and round on the hilltops, with big with big gaps (and hills) between.
If you just look at this sign you’d think a cycle commute from Waldrennach to the larger town of Neuenbürg was a doddle at 3,8km, a nice easy distance for cyclists, on a road closed to vehicles. What it doesn’t tell you is this is 20m above Neuenbürg, and cyclists to Waldrennach have another 200m to climb. If you want to be the next Lance Armstrong (And much respect if you do) this is your ideal training route, but most of us aren’t really up for this.
To add insult to injury, the valleys can create winds: Geographers call these anabatic and katabatic winds and insist that anabatic winds are created when warm light air rises along the valley floor and up the sides, and on a really good day, make thunderstorms as well, while katabatic winds are cooler, heavier air blowing down at night. Cyclists call them all sorts of things and insist they are created by the presence of a cyclist by a malicious fate, so we’re riding into a permanent headwind. A similar meterological process causes coastal winds in the Netherlands, and as David Hembrow says, they are a major problem as well.
This shows the trouble with a ‘one size fits all’ approach to cycling: Faced with a 200m climb to visit grandma, very few people will use bikes even if there is perfect infrastructure all the way. (that said, a safe route along the valleys would be nice) The villages are so compact everyone walks except for xtracycle nutters like me who should know better. Bike lanes on narrow steep mountain roads probably aren’t practical, so how do you provide an alternative to cars here, especially as this is one place where some people will need cars for work? I reckon a combination is required: trains and buses that carry bikes (lots of bikes) at no extra charge, preferably with good connections from the valley to the hills, so the train along valley comes into station as bus comes into the forecourt, so passengers can change without waiting, rather than seeing their connection pull away as they arrive.
This is the same problem as we face. Ostfildern (Suggested motto: “Four wheels good, two wheels bad”) is about 170m above Stuttgart or Esslingen and there is almost no way around it. Stuttgart now allows limited bike transport on the Metro but you can only carry bikes on a bus off peak, which rules out commuting. Even if Ostfildern wakes up to reality and makes a decent cycle network, we’d still need to help people get up the hills before we have any chance of a cycling culture.
So what ways are there? I’ve already mentioned the rack railway in Stuttgart, but there must be other ways. Does anyone else know of low cost ways to get lots of bikes up monster gradients?
One of the useless things I learned at high school was the story of King Canute placing his throne to the beach (or at least, hiring a deckchair) and commanding the tide not to come in, to show the people that he had power over the sea (Or to show them he didn’t. Accounts vary). Either way he got wet feet. Unfortunately, the ‘Canute Method’ of Government seems to be back in fashion and it’s our very own government who are leading the way down to the seaside with their ‘Scrapping Premium’. As I’ve mentioned before this brilliant idea is that if you have a car over nine years old that you’ve owned at least a year you can scrap it, buy a new one and the Government will give you €2500 towards the cost. And you thought socialism was dead.
Now it appears the governments of Europe are all getting out their buckets and spades and heading off for the political seaside, none more enthusiastically than in the UK where the government is always on the lookout for ways to throw money at motorists. Apart from the silliness of encouraging people to destroy perfectly good cars, buy new ones, and then claim it is ‘for the Environment’ (I did not make that up) the ‘Business as usual’ mantra of the modern day Canutes misses one rather important point, namely that if we stay fixed to a car (read: ‘oil’) based transport system, we are simply delaying the inevitable. Oil is running out, and ‘Peak Oil’, the point at which demand begins to exceed supply, is no longer just being muttered amongst pot-smoking yurt dwellers, but is becoming a common phrase amongst amongst economists and transport planners. Their consensus: cheap oil is a thing of the past, the price dropped wit demand as the recession hit, but there are concerns that this recession is merely a dress rehearsal for what happens later when the demand for oil from recovering global economies sends prices soaring. One businessman has already said that Americans could face paying ten dollars for a gallon of petrol. What looks like a turning tide could in fact be a Tsunami over the horizon.
Canute gave up trying to turn the tide, and moved on. Instead of playing with sandcastles the governments and car builders could be working together to make a transport network for the future, where people don’t have to rely on cars. They won’t of course: they will just present a make believe future of cars running on batteries while making ever more gas guzzlers, but while they do, the grown-ups can be planning ahead. There are lots of very useful books and and blogs with practical ideas for changing our lifestyles in the face of a possible future there oil is very expensive indeed. I’m not talking about building a fortress in the wilderness and eating mushrooms, more making adjustments to wean us off depending on oil, directly or indirectly. As a family we’re looking at the possibilities, and I’ll probably blog about that as and when it happens. We’re already discovering that life gets richer when we just make a start.
Ironically I expect a lot of people will call us ‘prophets of doom’, but it beats sitting on a beach and shouting at the waves.
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.
Middle son learning about real transportation
The businessman stopped stirring his coffee and looked at me in disbelief.
“You walked here with two children?”
“Er… yes”.
“All the way from the railway station? In this weather?”
I looked out of the window. It was cold and overcast. There was snow left on the ground, and I tried to think of a way to say “We’re trying to have a lower impact on the environment around us.” without sounding judgmental or pious. in German. The businessman followed my gaze out of the window.
“If I was going just to there” -He gestured at a house about 100m away- “I’d use the car in this weather.” He looked across at a mutual friend who confirmed that I was indeed about to use my legs to transport myself two kilometres to the railway station, had been offered a lift, and had declined on the basis that I seemed to have ‘forgotten’ a car seat for the boys.
“Wow. That’s a completely different lifestyle.”
For most of the party thus far, people had talked about cars. The current government has come up with a cunning plan to revitalise the car manufacturing industry: if you had an old car and you can prove you scrapped it and bought a new one, they’ll give you money towards the new one, so some people here had obviously decided that subsidy is good and got a new car. The discussion was all about acceleration rates, power-to-weight ratios, maintenance costs, the exorbitant amount the government sucks out of the poor hardworking motorist these days, and of course whose car did more kilometres per litre. Yawn.
These were not stupid, lazy or ignorant people. They were kind, smart and working hard, in an affluent society that teaches the ethic of burning vast amounts of energy to get where they wanted to go Right Now and Fast.
I decided to go for a early train home. This confirmed my eccentricity: I was proposing to take 2 hours eating a picnic on a train with big windows, a toilet, and lots of space, instead of 45 cramped minutes dodging Mercedes drivers and hoping the boys wouldn’t get too hungry or need the loo before we got back. For reason’t that I can’t quite explain the latter idea held no appeal, so I gathered the boys up and we said our farewells and made a Heroic Exit Into The Tempest. We walked back along a wide shared use bike/pedestrian route that barely touched a road and arrived at the station in time to see the train depart. Typical.
Standing on the station waiting for an onward train to Stuttgart in the dark is not the best place to be upbeat, and the thought of a generation growing up with their lives dominated by cars was a bit depressing. Being treated as the eccentric cyclist can get a bit wearing and I do have days when I wonder why I bother. Are we making a difference?
The brightest light in the station came from a well-lit building at one end of the platform, and having nothing better to do than grump like a nordic playwright, I went over to investigate. It was a sizeable multi-storey bike park, secure and enclosed, and absolutely full of bikes. There’s hope yet.
The picnic/train ride was fun too.
So I made it up…
April 2, 2009 in General musings while dodging traffic, Germany, Grumpy, Ostfildern, Sustainability, Trenchant comments about cars | Tags: Ostfildern | 1 comment
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.