When Hamburg’s Senator for Transport can be seen in photos, which has happened quite often since his appointment, it is mostly with his black bicycle. If you meet Anjes Tjarks for a chat, he will also be happy to come on a bike and explain his plans and the obstacles as part of a bike tour through his area. A popular starting point is the Jungfernstieg, a symbol of the Hamburg redevelopment.
This southern bank of the Inner Alster has been closed to motorized individual traffic, as it is called, for some time. Only public buses, taxis and electric cars are allowed to drive through; traffic islands with flower boxes have been installed in the middle of the street. Not everyone adheres to the rules, but pedestrians and cyclists appreciate this traffic calming, although we will still have to talk about their internal relationship.
The Green politician Tjarks, 40, cannot be accused of first discovering the motorless movement as part of his new job. He used to prefer to ride a bicycle, for example from his former home in Jenfeld in the north-east of Hamburg to the grammar school – over a cycle path that was already broken at the time. Since June 2020, however, his affection has increased, because then the teacher, political scientist and former parliamentary group leader of the Greens became the first senator for transport and mobility in the Hamburg parliament.
A hundred years ago, Copenhageners made a pilgrimage to Hamburg to see a bicycle city
SPD Mayor Peter Tschentscher brought him into his red-green Senate to get this mobility transition going. The bicycle plays an essential role in this, because the Hanseatic city is reflecting on its past. Anjes Tjarks reminds us that the world’s first bicycle club was founded in Hamburg. It was the Altona Bicycle Club from 1869/80, founded under the beautiful name Eimsbütteler Velozipeden-Reit-Club in that same district of Eimsbüttel. Among the founders was what is believed to be the first German bicycle dealer, Harro Feddersen, his name was.
Until the Second World War, people from Copenhagen made a pilgrimage to Hamburg to see what a bicycle city was, reports Tjarks. Meanwhile it is the other way around, because Hamburg has meanwhile turned into a car city and has also abolished its tram. That is about to change: “Hamburg will become a bicycle city”, says the coalition agreement between the SPD and the Greens, in which the word “bike” occurs 93 times.
“The promotion of cycling,” says the paper, “is an effective, climate-friendly and inexpensive means of implementing the traffic turnaround in Hamburg.” The proportion of cycling should be increased to 25 to 30 percent over the course of this decade. Tjarks promises this year 60 to 80 kilometers of new or repaired bike paths and “in perspective” 100 kilometers annually. He raves about digitization, networking, car sharing and rental bikes. “The rider has to deliver!” Hamburger Morgenpost. Does he deliver?
In January 2021, his authority reported the construction or renovation of 62 kilometers of bicycle network for 2020. That is a record, 63 percent more than in 2019. The next figures are expected soon. Anyone who rolls through Hamburg on a velocipede in wind and weather with open eyes may draw their own interim balance after about a year and a half of the institutionalized traffic turnaround.
Yes, something is happening. On main streets such as Ballindamm or Hallerstraße suddenly there are wide popup lanes, which annoys motorists because they only have one lane, but makes cyclists happy because they can suddenly find space even with the cargo bike. A few corners further, on the other hand, the cyclist jerks either over cobblestones, parked with SUVs, or has to be instructed by residents or the police if he uses the footpath as an alternative.
Hamburg becomes a bicycle city; this does not reduce the traffic jam at first
Even footpaths with bike paths are a battle zone because the colors are often only slightly different from each other. Anyone who puts their foot on a cycle path or vice versa their bike on a footpath seems to be committing a kind of human rights crime. In order to de-escalate, the “Alliance for Cycle Traffic” was recently transformed into an “Alliance for Cycle and Pedestrian Traffic”. Pedestrians find that cyclists tend to belong on the street, especially since one or the other person in the saddle tends to pound the sidewalk along cycle paths regardless of losses.
On the other hand, the road is sometimes a dead zone for cyclists, trucks turning right are particularly notorious. In addition, some bike paths were painted on the asphalt between two lanes for cars, so it doesn’t just get uncomfortable between two trucks. The planners are now trying to guide cars, cyclists and walkers through lanes that are as separate as possible, but it is not easy.
The urban square is no longer there, and beautiful Hamburg is located on two larger bodies of water. From north to south the Alster, from east to west the Elbe, that is not insignificantly the attraction of the city, but it makes the traffic a little more difficult. As almost everyone knows by now, Hamburg has more bridges than Amsterdam and Venice combined. And a congested Elbe tunnel. At the same time, you can cycle comfortably on the west bank of the Outer Alster, even on a bicycle road at 30 km / h for cars. On the east bank, the chaos should disappear when construction is finished there. The Hamburg construction sites: there are currently around 700.
“For a real change in mobility, we need more space for our bikes, on the streets and in our heads,” writes the Hamburg department of the General German Bicycle Club, the ADFC. Anjes Tjarks thinks that the car has been looked after long enough. The car takes up too much space, the time for new concepts is ripe. The cyclist and traffic senator tells how someone fell on his neck when they opened the first pop-up bike lane on the Schlump near the Schanzenviertel.