He has rarely received so much praise, says Benjamin Glas. He is a planner in the mobility department and presented the results of the traffic test on Fraunhoferstraße in an online discussion on Wednesday evening. Two and a half years ago, the city removed all 120 parking spaces and marked a red, 2.30 meter wide bike lane on both sides. No wonder that there was criticism as well as praise.
Because there has been trouble ever since. On the one hand, there are residents and business people who are not even allowed to legally stop in front of their house to unload. On the other hand, there are the cyclists who have to repeatedly switch to the carriageway because the bike lanes are illegally blocked by delivery traffic. For the latter, there would be the delivery zones in the side streets that the city created to replace them. But they are often blocked by cars. And that is the biggest problem that has not yet been resolved.
Some drivers are unlikely to be aware that they are parking illegally, some of them dutifully buy a parking ticket without paying attention to the signs. For a long time, others simply didn’t care, because parking in the restricted parking ban has only cost 15 euros so far, an amount that many people afforded without thinking twice, if it was actually written down at all. Now, however, the city hopes that the new increased fines of up to 50 euros will have a positive effect, because towing is usually not possible. The Fraunhoferstraße remains a focus for traffic monitoring in the city. Because Tempo 30 has recently been applied there, the city is also considering installing stationary speed cameras there.
The number of bicycle accidents has decreased
In spring, the department intends to submit a draft resolution to the city council on how the Fraunhoferstraße could finally be designed. It is already clear that the parking spaces will not come back. But there should be additional and more clearly marked delivery zones in the side streets. Traffic planner Glas rules out that trees are planted because of the underground supply lines. The sidewalks could be widened slightly, but this is very expensive. The city does not want to take any space away from the 3,500 pedestrians who pass Fraunhofer Strasse during the day, which is why delivery zones directly on the street would be problematic.
The majority of the 150 or so participants approved the measures on Wednesday. Because they also have a positive effect: if there were eleven cycling accidents from April 2018 to June 2019, there were only four from August 2019 to November 2020. Not a single one of these four accidents was caused by a car door pushed open or by a cyclist entering the tram.
The daily number of motor vehicles on the road also fell, from 16,000 a day to 11,000. The number of cyclists, of whom around 3,500 were previously on the road within eight hours, has also declined – despite the bike lane – but only since the redesign 2800. However, the mobility department traces this back to the construction site for the Altstadt-Radlring on Blumenstrasse, which is why many road users apparently preferred a different route.
By the way, according to mobility officer Georg Dunkel, blocking out through traffic would not be worthwhile. The tram would stay there, there would be no additional space for delivery zones. Verkehrsplaner Glas sums up: The Fraunhoferstraße is one of the more difficult cases that he has worked on in his career.