The bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the Schwer-Reiter-Straße should be an eye-catcher. A positive figurehead that could document how important it is to the city of Munich to improve its cycling infrastructure. Once built, as part of a cycle expressway from Dachau, it would represent the “optimal” crossing of the busy road intersected by a tram route – at least that’s what the Neuhausen-Nymphenburg and Schwabing-West district committees saw in 2019.
The local politicians had just been presented with four designs for such a bridge as the core element of a cycle route developed by mobility expert Simon Herzog from the Olympic Park via Heßstrasse to the city center – designed by students from the TU Department of Metal Construction. The response: enthusiasm.
That was four and a half years ago now. Shortly beforehand, the city council had already commissioned the administration to use a “feasibility study to show the possibilities of an innovative bridge solution” and to “present the results to the city council”.
The first results of the feasibility study have been available for more than a year now. But they were never presented to the city council or district committees, despite repeated requests from politicians to be informed of the status. Instead, the mobility department wants to put the future design of the Schwer-Reiter-Strasse to a vote in the Mobility Committee on January 24th – including the proposal for a “ground-level, barrier-free crossing option for pedestrians and cyclists” at the level of Heßstrasse. The road, which is used by 28,000 cars every day, is scheduled to be rebuilt from the middle of the year for around eleven million euros.
The transport authority, on the other hand, recommends that the bridge solution “not be pursued further at this time”. Because the space for the bridge ramp on the side of the creative quarter would compete with an area for subsidized housing construction. And because the ramp on the other side affects the property of the Free State, which is currently building the new criminal justice center there.
The reaction from district representatives: incomprehension. “The fact that the feasibility study was not published and discussed is absurd,” says route initiator Simon Herzog, who now sits on the Neuhausen-Nymphenburg district committee for the CSU. According to the engineer responsible for mobility at Europe’s largest center for start-ups and innovation, “EntrepreneurTUM”, this is a “disregard for the resolutions”. Variants, feasibility of development, usefulness, financing, all of this could have been discussed – with the participation of the Free State and residents such as “UnterunternehmenTUM” or SAP and Red Bull as the operator of the SAP Gardens, which opens in 2024.
There have been various proposals for the bridge over Schwer-Reiter-Straße.
(Photo: Visualization: TU Munich)
The crossing will probably not be realized now.
(Photo: Visualization: TU Munich)
Bernadette Felsch (Greens), member of the West Swabian district committee and chairwoman of the ADFC Bayern, made a similar statement. “If you build a rapid cycle connection like the one planned here to Dachau, you don’t build in as many traffic light stops, detours and rail crossings as possible.” The fact that a possible alternative is now being shelved “suddenly in such a hurry that the district committees can no longer even be heard properly” is “extremely frustrating” and anything but transparent. According to their speaker Genevieve Cory, the cycling decision activists also find it “super difficult that the city has spent a lot of money on this feasibility study and no one gets to see it.”
Only Martin Wagle reacts more calmly. “I know that it is possible to find a pragmatic solution,” says the CSU cycling policy spokesman in the Bavarian state parliament. He would find a bridge, however designed, “very, very positive.” Ultimately, it is important to “create continuity in a cycle highway”. Because that is the essence of cycle highways – to avoid dangerous situations such as those that could arise on the Schwer-Reiter-Straße. Among other things, Wagle played a leading role in developing the Bavarian Bicycle Act.
A variant that could be feasible from Herzog and Felsch’s point of view would be an imaginative combination of buildings along Heßstrasse and a bridge. Like in the Dutch city of Utrecht: There, the access ramp to the Dafne Schippers Bridge, which is built in a large hairpin bend, runs in places directly over a school roof. “We have the creative quarter here,” says Herzog. “You could then think creatively.”