In the future, cyclists should only need a little more than 20 minutes from the border of the state capital to the center of the city of Unterschleißheim, at an average speed of 20 kilometers per hour. It should take about half an hour to cycle to the university town of Garching. That is the vision that was developed years ago. But now the preparatory work for the first cycle expressway in the Free State of Bavaria is actually beginning in the district of Munich – in the city of Garching.
It is only a few hundred meters in the city area, which will be prepared for construction work from next Monday, February 20th. This is specifically about the so-called Section 4.1 South, which begins on the existing cycle path on federal highway 13, the Ingolstädter Landstraße, about 200 meters south of the Schleissheim Canal and from there leads eastwards for 700 meters. A bicycle bridge is also to be built over the canal, from which the route will continue north in front of the U 6 railway line. There, the route mostly runs to the west of the existing tracks and then ends at Garching-Hochbrück underground station.
The routing has been a long struggle
In order to be able to tackle this first section, however, some trees, bushes and hedges have to give way. According to the district office, the work for this will be completed before the beginning of the bird breeding season on March 1st. According to the authorities, all public interests such as nature conservation, but also monument protection and the interests of the residents were taken into account in the planning phase; all requirements and compensatory measures developed from the planning would be “fully” taken into account.
This summer, the symbolic groundbreaking ceremony for the first construction phase could finally take place, which had been a long struggle, especially in the university town. Above all, the originally planned variant of building the cycle expressway within the city along the busy federal highway 471 was heavily criticized and then rejected again.
In the not too distant future, commuters will then be able to ride on a 23-kilometer cycle highway from Munich city center to the district of Munich. In the state capital, work began last autumn on a first, 500-meter-long section of the express cycle path.