The road to the traffic turnaround is bumpy at times. In Munich, the city hall coalition of the Greens/Pink List and SPD/Volt has had a good fight over the reorganization of the street space. Whether tunnel construction in the north of Munich, redesign in the valley or city-wide speed reduction: a cobblestone full of differences of opinion. The administration has now announced an unusual intervention on a much-discussed traffic axis: on Leopoldstraße, a speed limit of 30 km/h is to apply throughout a length of almost two kilometers from spring 2023.
The decision on the reduced maximum speed comes from the mobility department. The department had recently submitted a traffic law order to the locally responsible Schwabing-Freimann district committee, according to which a speed limit of 30 km/h should apply permanently in both directions on the dead-end road to the north between Franz-Joseph-Straße and Schwabinger Tor. “By arranging Tempo 30, traffic noise is reduced and the safety of road users is further improved,” says a spokeswoman for the mobility department when asked by the SZ. In the past, there had been repeated complaints from local residents about nighttime car races and the flaunting of car poses.
So far, however, local traffic authorities have had a hard time slowing down cars on main thoroughfares such as Leopoldstrasse. The Road Traffic Act (StVO) stipulates a speed limit of 50 kilometers per hour for built-up areas. If you want to drive more slowly on a street, the traffic authority must justify why you want to throttle the traffic at this point. Just as it has now done on Leopoldstrasse for reasons of noise protection and emissions. Actually, the federal government had announced that it wanted to reform the regulations for Germany’s roads soon – which would have noticeable consequences for the municipalities. But the process is dragging on, and a new version can be expected in a few years at the earliest.
From the point of view of the mobility department, but also in the opinion of local politicians, the speed limit on Leopoldstrasse is not a massive intervention in road traffic. “During the rush hour there is already only stop and go,” says Lars Mentrup, who represents the SPD in the city council and also in the district committee (BA) Schwabing-Freimann. He was pleasantly surprised that the administration had taken action “on its own initiative” to do something about the noise and exhaust fumes. A speed of 30 km/h already applies on weekdays around the Rudolf Steiner School near the Gieselastraße underground station. This area will now be included in the permanent speed limit. The mobility department does not expect drivers to switch to other streets in the district due to the new restriction, “since there are no comparably attractive alternative routes”.
Nikolaus Gradl, Mentrup’s party colleague on the city council and transport policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, sees the whole thing more critically. “As long as we don’t get all drivers to stick to a maximum speed, introducing a 30 km/h speed limit on the main road network doesn’t make sense,” he says. A bus driver who is flashed could lose his job. He pleads for more efficient controls of the maximum speed. “If that’s not enough, then further speed restrictions.”
Leopoldstraße will change in the coming years – debate about Tempo 30 or not. Today the route north is still heavily trafficked. On a normal day, an average of 30,000 motor vehicles move between Altstadtring and Ungererstrasse. That’s about a quarter of the load that occurs every day on the Mittlerer Ring. In the near future, a new tram will connect the northern parts of the city with each other and with the city center via the English Garden. It is not yet clear exactly what that will look like, since in addition to a cycle expressway, the new tram tracks in the direction of Münchner Freiheit would also have to find space on Leopoldstrasse. The results of a corresponding traffic study are still pending.