An hour and a half had passed and we had heard lengthy explanations about cars and the transport of the future when a visitor in the audience complained that she was tired of the excuses as to why there was no progress with climate protection and the mobility transition. Then she asks perhaps the central question of the evening: “Where is your courage?”
In front of her, on the stage of the Munich Adult Education Center, she experiences one of the rare meetings between a representative of the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), which is currently organizing the IAA, and people who are committed to the mobility transition through their profession or vocation. “How long will we continue to drive cars – fossil fuels?”
There are three gentlemen sitting there with different shades of gray. Moderator Helmut Paschlau, who, as a volunteer with “Protect the Planet”, is a kind of gray eminence of the civil society fighting for climate protection, invited and said that he had just seen a huge poster in Washington on the building of the local environmental agency, warning citizens say: “The biggest problem is your car.”
This could be the start of a lively debate about the Munich divide: here the claim to make 80 percent of traffic emission-free in just two years (e-cars count as emission-free for statistics), there the fact that the number of car registrations is increasing and rise. Katja Diehl, author and traffic activist who joined in from Hamburg and is visibly and audibly the youngest of the group, makes a pointed start. She is not a car hater, but is convinced that car privileges have to be withdrawn in order to achieve a transport transition: where it makes sense, parking spaces have to be converted into safe cycle paths and, in general, car speeds in cities have to be reduced. Diehl’s credo: “Everyone should have the right not to have to rely on their own car.”
Planning a new cycle path takes years
And then? Then the representatives of the status quo give a lecture. Andreas Rade, VDA managing director, explains with PowerPoint help and statistics that the car continues to be the central means of transport for Germans and that the German car industry is already in the middle of the transformation from combustion engine to electric: “This is really a big, big one step”, and we should be proud of that. He himself lives in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, and practically only rides his bike in everyday life, especially to work. Rade advocates thinking about the means of transport together so that there is the right one for every purpose.
This is followed by mobility officer Georg Dunkel, Munich’s “city minister”, a mixture of administrator of the transport transition and transport politician. His core message is similar to that of the previous speaker: The city is already doing a lot for environmentally friendly transport and would like to do even more, but the federal government is preventing that. He doesn’t give municipalities enough authority, for example for 30 km/h zones. Dunkel tries to refute the oft-formulated criticism of the speed of Munich’s traffic transformation: “We would like to be much, much faster in many of the plans,” but one has to accept that planning a new cycle path takes years. After all, the increase in cycling traffic by 30 percent, says Dunkel, “is a very nice development.”
While car representative Rade appears calm and confident, traffic manager Dunkel comes across as calm and timid. How, the moderator asks, does the city want to convince citizens of the sense of the transport transition in times of climate crisis? Where is the campaign for change? “Good question,” answers Dunkel. You would first have to have a “very, very good political discussion” before starting such a campaign. As long as the Free State doesn’t even allow the city to increase the current annual resident parking fee of 30 euros – what’s the point of a campaign?
E-mobility, yes, but also creating alternatives to cars
It is Katja Diehl who tries to give the men’s discussion in Munich some impetus via the screen: “We have increasing emissions,” she says about the transport sector. We need politicians who don’t look to the next election, but do what is necessary. E-mobility, yes, but also creating alternatives to cars.
When the performance balance from industry and administration oscillates into a mixture of lamentation (Rade: there are still far too few charging stations in public spaces) and self-praise (Dark: Munich isn’t that bad after all), the Hamburg woman intervenes. She doesn’t want the streets to remain a huge parking lot, even in the electric age, full of charging stations. Car traffic must be reduced, also for social reasons. After all, it is mainly people with little money who live on the main streets and suffer from noise and dirt.
After this plea for climate and human protection, the woman in the audience asks the city minister about his courage to move forward in transport policy and to try something out. Dunkel responds with reference to the “surplus of trees” on some streets that are being converted in accordance with the cycling decision, to the “summer streets” with trees for a few weeks, and that it is so difficult to find space for them due to the many pipes and cables under the asphalt Find new street trees.
And the courage? Dark doesn’t address this. Instead, he asks the person next to him from the industrial association if he can express a wish. He is allowed to. According to Dunkel’s wish, solutions are needed for urban areas to reduce the number of cars. The audience applauds.
A few snarky comments come from there. Munich should learn from other cities that are already creatively practicing sustainable mobility, such as Copenhagen or Utrecht. “I do believe,” says Dunkel, “that we are proceeding creatively.” Yes, he learns from other cities, but he can’t copy everything. Munich is “absolutely on the right track”.
It’s Katja Diehl again who finally breathes life into the dignified conversation about one of the biggest political controversial topics. Everything that is discussed in such rounds is very technical. “I’m keen to design something.” It is always better to “design rather than be designed.” In any case, she wants a world in which encounters between people on the street are normal again and in which children can travel independently. “That’s not possible in a world where cars dominate.”