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Germany makes its public transportation a success story

A recent example is the residential area named Quartier Vauban. The site, a former military base left unoccupied in the beginning of the 1990s, was transformed into a sustainable district, made nearly entirely car-free with a tram access connecting the district to the city centre. The designers of the district decided on purpose to severely cut down the parking space. Consequently, in 2009, 70% of the households did not have a car ? they either walked or cycled, or used the public transportation for their daily trips. Such projects help in reducing traffic fatalities as well: only 3.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in Freiburg in 2005 as compared with the national average of 6.5.

Munster is the German champion for cycling: 54% of all trips are made using non-motorised means of transport. This medium size city has more bicycles than inhabitants (500,000 bikes for 300,000 inhabitants). The city was recently elected bike-friendliest city by more than 200,000 habitants in Germany. The administration implemented a set of dedicated NMT infrastructure and measures to favour cycling in the city and its periphery. The infrastructure includes an extended bike lanes network (460kms), a car-free-ring around the city centre, numerous bike stations and one of the largest underground cycle parking spaces at the rail station.

 

unlimited individual mobility ? is an illusion ? the future belongs to the means of public transportation (and this will be) a driving force of city renewal.
? Mayor of Vienna/Austria (Gratz, 1981)

Such initiatives are far from being restrained to small and medium cities. Indeed, large cities such as Berlin, Munich or Frankfurt have achieved good results as well: there were just 321, 432 and 387 cars per 1000 inhabitants registered respectively in 2010-2011.

With over 1.3M inhabitants, Munich has managed to increase drastically the number of parking spaces for bicycles – up to 45,000 units in the city. Multimodal trips are encouraged, enabling passengers to bring bikes in the metro or suburban trains. To further discourage people from using cars, the city has adopted a strategy that consists of making the use of public transportation more affordable and more convenient. Car parking has been further limited and fees sharply increased. At the same time, large parking lots have been built aside railway stations at the periphery to facilitate the modal shift. Traffic has been calmed in more than 75% of the city. The objective is twofold: make the city friendlier to users of green transportation modes and deter people from using their cars.

In Frankfurt am Main (680,000 inhabitants), the use of bicycle increased by 250% between 1998 and 2008. This was made possible through active policies such as developing bike lanes, limiting car speed within the city, and creating more car free zones.

 

The acquisition cost of a car has increased as well and subsidies granted by the companies to their employees to use cars have been replaced by many companies with subsidised monthly public transport tickets.

As a result, the cycling share in the modal split has increased from 9 to 13% in Frankfurt during the same decade (vs. 10% at the national level). Much has been achieved in pilot districts such as Nordend where experiments to encourage sustainable proximity mobility have been successful, i.e. spatial organisation within the district has been rethought in order to give a clear priority to pedestrians and bicyclists. This successful experience will be replicated and extended to other districts.

Challenges for coming years

Public transportation was made affordable partly through cost cutting in the sector over the past two decades, both on infrastructure and in operations. Consequently, some of the rail systems in Germany are ageing and need to be renewed. That implies large investments in the near future which will not be easy to finance given the current tense economic context.

Another source of preoccupation is the ageing of the German population: the seniors tend to use less public transportation than the other age groups which could lead to a decrease in revenue and threaten its financing structure in the long term. However, young generation?s user behaviour is different from that of the older generation ? they are relying more on public transportation. It is thus reasonable to think that this pattern will remain in the future and that the use of public transportation will further increase. This, however, requires adjustments for the elderly such as an increased accessibility (elevators, barrier free accessibility, extended access to wheeling chairs, etc.).

During the last few years, citizens have increasingly asked the politicians to strengthen livability in their surroundings, and have called for speed reductions, traffic calming measures, more greenery and a redefinition of the urban space. There is, meanwhile, also a healthy competition between the German cities to improve livability. The German residents expect their mayors to concentrate more towards this end.

Manfred Breithaupt, Senior Transport Advisor at the GIZ, has worked in over 50 countries. His experience covers transport planning, transport sector policy and restructuring, sector financing, commercialisation and institutional development. He is the Editor of the Sourcebook on Sustainable Urban Transport.

 

Mael Martinie is a junior transportation consultant at the GIZ. He studied Public Policies in France, Germany and Spain with focus on urban governance.


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