The Landtag SPD is calling for its own Bavarian cycling law. The goal behind this is to increase the share of cycling in the total traffic volume to 30 percent by 2030. To this end, investments in cycle paths are to be increased and accelerated, and there is to be a separate demand plan for cycle superhighways. Municipalities should be given more support in expanding cycling. The current speed of the state government is not enough for the SPD.
The Greens also want to submit a similar bill soon. “The bike has enormous potential, the prerequisites are safe cycle paths and good parking facilities. Examples such as Copenhagen show that,” said the spokesman for mobility for the Greens in the Landtag, Markus Büchler. The initiative is to be debated in the state parliament on November 23. “We have to significantly improve cycling in Bavaria. It has to become so attractive that more people choose to cycle on a daily basis,” said SPD traffic expert Inge Aures of the German press agency in Munich. Bavaria has to ignite the turbo when it comes to cycling. “The climate change can only succeed with a good network of cycle paths. Bavaria has a lot of catching up to do here.”
In 2017, the state government set the goal of increasing the share of cycling in total traffic volume from ten to 20 percent by 2025. However, Aures called the previous balance of the Bavarian cycling program disappointing. She refers to the answers of the Ministry of Construction and Transport to a written question: According to this, only 323 kilometers of cycle paths on state roads and federal roads in Bavaria have been added in the past three years – of which only 220 kilometers on state roads. Not a kilometer of the announced cycle superhighways has yet been built, and all projects are still in the planning phase. Of the 14,500 kilometers of state roads, only 4,050 kilometers have so far been equipped with cycle paths.
Concept for car-free city centers required
“The state government has only built 220 kilometers of new cycle paths on its roads in three years,” criticized Aures. Cycle superhighways have not yet been implemented at all, despite planning since 2015, and there is a lack of parking spaces for bicycles everywhere. “That is a meager record. We as legislators now have to make clear guidelines in order to accelerate the expansion,” she demanded. That is why the SPD was the first parliamentary group to submit a draft of its own Bavarian wheel law. Now the state parliament is called upon.
In several parallel applications, the SPD also calls for several competence and advice centers across Bavaria for planning and promoting cycle path construction. And it requires the state government to develop and tender a concept for the introduction of a car-free inner city in seven model cities (one for each administrative district). “We need a funding program here in order to pursue this innovative approach, which has already been successfully implemented abroad,” she said. “In this way we ensure good air and less noise in our beautiful inner cities, which can also attract more tourists as a result.”
In their design, the Greens also want cycle superhighways based on the models of Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia and the legal anchoring of the priority of pedestrian and bicycle traffic as well as public transport in traffic planning. There should be a traffic-calmed zone in front of schools, a state agency should support the more than 2000 municipalities in the Free State, for example, with the planning of their cycling concepts.