Veloo
08-05-2015, 08:53 AM
Been to Munich once and really enjoyed it. Hope to experience this one day.
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/munichs-got-eye-huge-highway-system-cyclists/
gomango
08-05-2015, 09:37 AM
Been to Munich once and really enjoyed it. Hope to experience this one day.
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/munichs-got-eye-huge-highway-system-cyclists/
Count me in as well.
My wife has her family there and I would love to use this someday soon.
emckee1
08-05-2015, 12:36 PM
Not to hijack the thread, but I just got back from Munich. Tons of bikes and riders everywhere, almost none wearing helmets. This was my favorite sighting, however. Who would have thought you could surf in downtown Munich?
martl
08-06-2015, 03:57 AM
Munich is my hometown.
Bicycling has grown enormously the past 10-15 years in fact. This was mostly the doing of former mayor Christian Ude (SPD = socialist party) who is an avid cyclist himself, sometimes even seen cycling to his office.
http://www.christian-ude.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/winter.jpg
(this is not an abnormous exception, even the Bavarian Minister of the Interior Herrmann is sometimes seen on a bike making the trip between his ministry and the parlament)
Ude had a coalition with "die Gruenen" (environmentalists), his green co-mayor took on the role of "Fahrradbuegermeister" ("cycling mayor").
Sadly for cyclists, since the last elections we do have a coalition of socialists and the conservative party (CSU) at the reign, edging the traditionally bike-friendly green party out.
Munich is a difficult place for bike advocacy.
Munich is a highly developed area. 8 of the 30 biggest publically listed companies are based here. It is home to BMW and numerous other companies in the motor sector, who are responsible for a substatial ammount of the cities yearly tax income. Also the biggest german car club ADAC has its headquarters here.
Naturally, especially the conservative party are closely connected to those.
Also, munich is densely populated at 4.800 ppl/km? it has a population of 1.5mio, 1Mio registered cars, and 500.000 commuting in every day.
About 500.000 people commute into the city every day, and that at a total city size of 1.5Mio. 1Mio cars are registered.
Public transport is good, but at its brink.
Bike infra is mediocre. 40 years ago, it was very much en vogue to create as many bike lanes as possible, often by using the notorious white line on the sidewalk. Those are mandatory to use by german law. So there are a lot of bike lane kilometers, but many of those are not up to standard, inconvenient and dangerous to use.
Bike advocates work very hard to get those removed, lately supported by a decision of the German highest court, but still things go slowly. Often they are replaced by bike lanes on the road which work very well.
What we watch today is that the city government does its best to slow down bike development, especially when there is taking away the slightest bit from motorists is involved, but they are frequently overcome by what a friend of mine calls "the noramtive power of the fact" : Municians simply love to cycle, the city isn't that huge and mostly flat. The modal split is 17% and rising all over the city and above 25% in the inner parts of town, where the universities are located (munich has 150.000 students).
Cycling is reasonably safe with ~6 casualties per year, most of those the typical "lorry took a turn and overrun a cyclist" kind. These happen on places where there is bad infra as much as they do where state-of-the-art infra is, notably.
Currently, for advocacy, it is a struggle, but then it always is: The bigwigs in town hall are trying to fight for cars more than they are willing to fight for cyclists, and frequently are overruled by what the people really want and need. We've seen a couple of examples of that. For example, the new mayors team decided they didn't need a dedicated "cycling commissioner" any more (previous one did) only to reinstate one a year later.
Same things happen wherever well-identifed cyclist traps are going to be fixed.
Overall, we suffer from what happens if just some kind of "Infrastructure" is implemented whithout fully backing it from top down and without actively promoting a change of traffic culture: Infra is implemented to "keep the roads free for cars" rather than to accommodate or even favour non-motorized traffic.
ps: oh, and the surfers are a sight to see! it is amazing when one realizes what a tiny creek that really is, but i understand it has quite a reputation in the sufrer's galaxy. Even Robby Naish came here :)
At high water, the surfers and freestylers have fun on the big river as well: https://vimeo.com/13850688
vBulletin® v3.8.7, Copyright ©2000-2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.