Germany Is building an Autobahn for bikes

Cyclists on the bicycle superhighway won't have to worry about being struck by motor vehicles.

|
Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters
A cyclist rides his bicycle during a heavy snowfall near the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, Jan. 6.

To reduce air pollution and traffic congestion, cities around the world are increasingly booting cars off roads and encouraging people to bike to work or school.

It’s a great suggestion—until terrified bikers find themselves riding on a street with only a stripe painted on the pavement to separate them from cars and trucks. Showing up to work looking like a hot, sweaty mess after cycling a long distance on a hodgepodge of inconvenient, congested side roads doesn't have much appeal either.

Now Germany, the country that invented the modern highway for motor vehicles, is taking on the challenge of keeping bikers safe and enabling them to easily commute long distances. It opened a three-mile-long leg of the Radschnellweg, a new autobahn for bikes, just before the New Year.

Instead of forcing riders to avoid swerving vehicles on a busy street, the Radschnellweg is a dedicated multi-lane highway for two-wheeled transport. The bike lanes are about 13 feet wide, are lit at night, and, like a road for cars, will be plowed during winter to remove snow.

Martin Toennes, a representative of the regional development group RVR, said nearly 2 million people live within about a mile of the road, reported The Local. A study from RVR found that the bike highway could result in 50,000 fewer cars per day on roads in the region.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the exhaust pipe of one passenger vehicle pumps about 4.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so the reduction in Germany could make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

The thoroughfare, which primarily runs along decommissioned train tracks, is supposed to expand to 62 miles in length and connect 10 cities and four universities throughout the Ruhr district in northwest Germany.

The expansion isn’t without its problems. In Germany, building and maintaining bike routes has traditionally been the domain of local governments. That means that figuring out who will cough up the nearly $200 million needed to fund the expansion of the highway has become a political hot potato.

For this first section of the bike autobahn, the European Union picked up half the tab. The German government and the RVR split the other half.

"Without [state] support, the project would have no chance," said Toennes. As a result, some politicians have floated the idea of paying for the roadway with something motor vehicle drivers are all too familiar with: billboard advertising.

• Culture and education editor Liz Dwyer has written about race, parenting, and social justice for several national publications. She was previously education editor at Good. 

This article originally appeared at TakePart, a leading source of socially relevant news, features, opinion, entertainment, and information – all focused on the issues that shape our lives.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Germany Is building an Autobahn for bikes
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2016/0113/Germany-Is-building-an-Autobahn-for-bikes
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe