Car free stories from across the globe: spotlight on Berlin
Berlin is one of the cities featured in our Car Free Stories Map, which celebrates the many cities taking bold action to get cars off the road. In this blogpost, we look at how Berlin has catalysed action to ramp up cycling in the last few years….
While Dutch and Scandinavian cities may be the places that fill the popular imagination when it comes to city cycling, Berlin, where only one in three people has a car, qualifies as bike-crazy too with the majority of the population having pedal power.
The recent Mobility Act and new ’pedestrian law’ both aimed at achieving a large shift towards public transport, cycling and walking. But, there’s also a restless population campaigning for a far more ambitious transformation into a healthy, people-friendly city by designing out the majority of the remaining car use.
The emerging popular call for change has familiar reasonings:
Pollution - Berlin has an air pollution crisis. Official figures show that in 2020 there were 117 street sections where the annual limit on nitrogen dioxide pollution (NO2) was broken. Exposure to NO2 is linked to chronic lung disease and a host of respiratory complaints. Three quarters of NO2 pollution in Berlin comes from petrol and diesel-powered road traffic, cars and trucks.
Congestion - a built-in car bias is another reason why people want a change of direction. Well over half (58%) of the city’s traffic area has been taken by cars, even though in its central zone, ringed by the S-Bahn, fewer than one in five journeys (17%) are being made by car, according to 2014 figures. Only a tiny fraction of space, 3%, was committed to bicycles while within the S-Bahn area, bikes accounted for more journeys than cars. Car parking alone accounted for 17 sq km which is around 20 times more space than bikes.
Official action
In response to these concerns, Berlin’s Senate passed the draft Mobility Act in 2018. The Act should lead to a ‘comprehensive network of cycle lanes’ that will shadow the city’s main arterial roads in the city and be separated by bollards from vehicles ‘where there is enough space.’ A broader development of cycling infrastructure is also planned, which includes fast lanes and safe parking for bikes. Additionally, ten bicycle highways along wide lanes are planned; these will connect the city’s outskirts and centre. Buses are set to go electric by 2030, car sharing will be promoted and there is an aim to make car traffic ‘climate-neutral’ by 2045.
Complimenting the Mobility Act is the ’pedestrian law’ which is about raising the status and priority of walking as a way of getting around. This includes improving mobility and the user-friendliness of streets for disabled people. This is said to be the first time in Germany that the priority of pedestrian travel has been given a ‘legislative’ foundation. In the UK, for comparison, the priority for pedestrians and cyclists was raised as part of a 2022 update to the nation’s Highway Code. Each district in Berlin is now obliged to create a pilot project within three years to demonstrate what practical differences will be implemented. These are likely to include longer pedestrian road crossing times at green lights; more crossings, special measures to make school routes safer, more benches, lower kerbs for wheelchairs, and more vigorous policing of illegal parking and dangerous driving.
Business gears up for cycling
Motivation for change goes beyond municipal action too. A big source of pollution and congestion in towns and cities is due to the so-called ‘last mile delivery’. Since the rise of internet shopping, which spiked during the pandemic lockdowns and now remains high, all of the trucks and vans bringing parcels to people’s front doors have become a huge problem.
But the pandemic has seen the rise also of a potential solution to the problem: the cargo bike. Starting in 2018 Berlin trialled a free cargo bike rental service. Its network of cooperative micro depots using adapted shipping containers lent the service its name ‘KoMoDo’. The initiative teamed up with some of the largest delivery companies in the city including Deutsche Post, DHL, DPD GLS, Hermes and UPS and set the objective of not only testing the viability of a much more sustainable delivery model for Berlin, but also, to develop solutions that could be transferred to other municipalities. KoMoDo’s test phase was a success and the company DPD opened its own micro depot distribution centre using cargo bikes in January 2021.
Pandemic gets people pedalling
Like many cities, Berlin took special measures during the coronavirus pandemic to aid mobility that worked alongside the necessary public health measures. One city district, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, quickly introduced an impressive 15km of pop-up bike lanes. However, according to Dirk von Schneidemesser, of Changing Cities, the city should now be looking to install at least 250km of bike lanes every year in order to deliver on the commitments of the Mobility Act.
Several German cities are now committed to the principle of a 'Verkehrswende', or mobility transformation, and Schneidemesser argues that achieving this means not just making things easier for pedestrians and cyclists, but taking on ‘motordom’ and taking away the privileges and bias in the transport system that encourages car use. He says that the dominance of the car has been so normalised that people’s views have become deeply distorted and that a shift of mindset and new perspective is needed.
'The privileged position of the car has been around for so long that it’s really deep inside us. We accept it as normal and justified. And when someone suggests a change, we perceive it as a threat. For example, there is only one thing that is really allowed on streets, which make up the majority of our public space: cars,' he says, 'Nonetheless, when we open a street for numerous activities, socializing, commerce, social-oriented activities, sports, people talk about the road being closed. Closed!? So the situation in our heads is that when anybody can safely be in a space and practice a huge spectrum of activities, the road is closed, and when you can only do cars in that space, it’s open?'
The benefits to low income families
One thing is clear, pivoting away from a system designed for cars will bring multiple benefits to poorer households in Berlin, something which will be common for most towns and cities. Car ownership is concentrated on wealthier residents, with 44% percent of Berlin’s wealthy residents owning one or more cars, but only 22% of those on low incomes owning a car. Households with a net income under €500 owned, on average 0.2 cars, households earning over €5,600 had 1.27 cars – over six times more.
People say pedal faster for change
For all the action, the pace of change is not fast enough for the city’s citizens who have set up the Berlin Autofrei campaign. They consider both the Mobility Act and ’pedestrian law’, and their current implementation too timid as well as inadequate for solving Berlin’s congestion and pollution crisis. Berlin Autofreit has begun the first stages of a legislative process that uses a ‘people’s referendum’. Their initial steps were collecting and submitting 50,000 signatures on a petition that called for a ban on non-essential car traffic in the whole central area of Berlin. The five principles of Berlin Autofrei are: creating better quality of life in the city, enabling healthier lives for everyone, making more space for all, increasing safety on the city’s streets and, importantly, climate protection.
With a combination of official approval, in principle, to turn the tide against cars, companies innovating, and grassroots pressure, Berlin is one to watch as it works towards going car free.