The city of Munich has set itself the goal of making traffic climate-neutral by 2035. The theoretical basis for this project is the “Mobility Strategy 2035”. Because the mobility department does not want to leave road users out of the picture themselves, it launched a three-week online survey at the end of March, in which the participants were able to name their priorities in 19 road traffic topics and express their wishes.
More than 18,000 participants took the time to give their ratings and suggestions. The department will have to find out how much these are actually worth. On the one hand, not only Munich residents were allowed to take part, but everyone anonymously, whether from Giesing or Görlitz. Secondly, advocates of unchecked car traffic have apparently deliberately influenced the survey.
“Participation in the online dialogue was deliberately designed to be as barrier-free as possible in order to receive a large number of responses,” says the department, and: “This form of participation was deliberately chosen to capture an opinion.” Furthermore, it was found that “particularly after the calls to participate in our online dialogue in nationwide automobile networks, there were noticeable changes in the results”. The online participation is therefore informative, but not representative.
The survey revealed, for example, that cars are still very important. Almost 72 percent rated the topic of motorized private transport as very important. There are comments like “The most important means of transport. Even in Munich”, but also opposing positions like “Cars out of the city”.
A good 52 percent rated the topic of cycling as unimportant and only a good 26 percent as very important. Almost 38 percent of the participants rated local public transport as very important and just under 22 percent as important. On the other hand, 21 percent consider public transport to be unimportant, and almost 19 percent less important. Of 1,482 respondents, only one person ticked that they use public transport every day. When it comes to pedestrian traffic, the trends of important and unimportant are roughly balanced.
Pedestrians scold cyclists and scold drivers
“Shared mobility”, i.e. the sharing of cars, scooters or bicycles, comes off very badly. Almost 72 percent consider the topic to be unimportant or less important. Some participants seem to be seriously concerned with the topic and call for a broader range. However, the majority of comments made later in the survey were against car sharing and in favor of more parking spaces.
The mobility department now wants to technically evaluate the results. What you can already read from the comments, even as a layman, is that the participants are relatively irreconcilable. Pedestrians scold cyclists, who in turn scold drivers and pedestrians. Many motorists, on the other hand, rail against anything that doesn’t have a motor or four wheels.
And then there are also voices like this: “In my opinion, foot traffic isn’t really traffic, because it’s not really about getting around. You only go from the car to the shop, for example.” After all, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous admits that there should be green areas available for walks – of course “with sufficient parking facilities”.