Berlin's Bike Plans

Berlin's 'Vision Zero' mission plans to eradicate all fatalities on the city's streets. As part of this mission it is planning to greatly extend Berlin's cycling infrastructure. Tagesspiegel has
looked at Berlin's current provision for cyclists and where it plans to build new bike paths and protected bike lanes. The paper has also looked at where in the city drivers overtake cyclists too closely.

In Radmesser the German newspaper has mapped out where Berlin will build new cycling infrastructure. You can click on individual roads on the paper's new new cycle paths map to learn more about what is planned and what already exists in terms of protected bike lanes on each of Berlin's roads.

As part of its Radmesser series Tagesspiegel is also exploring the distance that car drivers give cyclists when they overtake. The police recommend that drivers leave at least 1.5-2 metres space when overtaking someone on a bicycle. Tagesspiegel has fitted one hundred bikes with sensors to find out how much space car drivers really give bike riders and where in the city cars give the most and least space to cyclists when overtaking. The cyclists chosen for the experiment live in 99 different zip-code areas in the city.

The 100 sensors have been on Berlin's roads since October and the data they record is collected everyday. So far these bikes have measured over 16,000 cars overtaking bikes. On over half of these occasions (9,402) the cars did not leave the legal 1.5-2 meter space. On 3,019 occasions cars left less than 1 meter when passing cyclists. Radmesser not only maps out where drivers in Berlin are not leaving the prescribed space when overtaking cyclists it has also looked at the time of day (between 10-12 am) when drivers pass the closest.