It is no wonder that after six years of planning, expectations are high for the first cycle superhighway in the Free State. But they have not come true for everyone involved. Now, after endless deliberations, umpteen feasibility studies and controversies, a final route has also emerged in the city of Garching, Markus Büchler, district councilor and member of the state parliament of the Greens, was disappointed with the solution on Thursday in the mobility committee of the district council. The route in Hochbrück and Garching, according to Büchler, is more like a “cycle bypass” with “a lot of zigzag”. It is not a lot of fun, said the Green Party, when you as a cyclist are “led around all possible destinations”.
In 2015, the district started planning the bicycle motorway from the Munich city limits in the northern district to Unterschleißheim and the university town of Garching; supported by analyzes that confirmed that this route had excellent potential. These still exist. But in the process it quickly became clear that the inner-city route in Garching in particular contained problems. Especially along the B 471. Now the Garching city council has obviously decided on a route that the district councils also support: from the junction of the B 13 with the B 471 over the Schleißheim Canal in an easterly direction, then east of Daimlerstraße to the north to U-Bahn station Garching Hochbrück, over the roundabout at the Parkring further along the Schafweideweg and finally the street Am See to the north. This is where the leisure and sports facilities and, after crossing the A 99 via the Freisinger Landstrasse and Ludwig-Prantl-Strasse, the research campus and the Garching-Forschungszentrum underground station are connected.
The Garching city council will deal with this variant on Tuesday, November 30th, and will also discuss minor changes again. For example an alternative route west of Lake Garching. In the main, however, the route is finally complete. Unterschleißheim’s mayor Christoph Böck (SPD) reminded the committee on Thursday of the long planning time. “The process on the cycle expressway since 2015 has made us realize that we will unfortunately not benefit from quick planning”, complained Böck and criticized the late involvement of the affected municipalities by the district: “An involvement from the beginning would have made sense and would have saved us a lot of time. “
District Administrator Christoph Göbel (CSU) said that the solution that had now been found had been worked out in close dialogue with the city; however, he also admitted that the word “fast” was not necessarily appropriate for this cycle expressway. In addition, the district administrator referred to the cramped conditions in the university town, which would have posed great challenges for the planners. For example, the expansion plans for the B 471 would have stood in the way of a route there, according to the district administrator. It is correct that the federal traffic route plan includes the expansion of the federal road to four lanes, which prevents the additional inclusion of a cycle superhighway. With a view to the concluded coalition negotiations in Berlin, the Green Büchler said that there would soon be a new federal transport route plan. “So I hope that the four-lane expansion will not come, because it would create even more traffic again,” said the Oberschleissheimer.
Comfortable and safe from the Stachus to the research campus
After completion, cyclists should be able to comfortably and safely travel a total of 23 kilometers from Stachus in downtown Munich to the Garching research campus or to Unterschleißheim. In the district alone, the construction costs will amount to at least 35 million euros. In the state capital, however, the planning has not yet progressed as far as in the district – and conflicts are to be expected there due to the space available on Ludwigstrasse and Leopoldstrasse, for example. The discussions about pop-up cycle paths have already shown how bitterly the argument about public space can be in Munich.