Germany is cycling backwards

By Floris Cooijmans

During the 2023 repeat election for the Berlin senate, one of the election posters of the CDU, the conservative Christian democratic party read: “Berlin, don't let your car get banned.” That no such thing was proposed by any of the other parties running in the election did not stop the CDU from pretending it was.

This slogan was a reaction to the previous left-wing city council, which had started to roll out some marginal improvements for non-car transportation in the city, such as planning a hundred kilometres of separated cycle paths, and pedestrianising Friedrichstraße, a busy central shopping street.

The CDU made this into a central election theme, which ended up working: Berlin car drivers voted en masse for the party proposing a traffic politics of “with each other”, as opposed to the perceived “against each other”, which resulted in the CDU winning the election by a wide margin. After quickly forming a coalition with the centre-left social democratic SPD, the first order of business for the new minister of transport was to halt all new bicycle infrastructure projects, and depedestrianise Friedrichstraße, which was celebrated as a win by the conservatives.

While other European cities are rapidly upgrading their cycling paths and pedestrianising more and more streets, Germany is not following suit. Why is that the case?

Part of the answer lies in German culture. In a country with such a prominent car culture, the love for das Auto is deeply ingrained. Proposals which aim to tackle the problem of congestion, traffic related air and noise pollution or people getting maimed or killed on the streets by restricting car use in any way, are highly controversial.

The love affair between Germany and the automobile did not fall from the sky; after all, the modern car was invented there in the 1880s, and more importantly, after WWII, the auto industry was one of the key factors in the Wirtschaftswunder, the post-war economic boom, and to this day, the export of (luxury) cars is one of the backbones of the German economy ever since (which explains German anxieties around the import of electronic cars from China).

Because of this, the political class and the car industry are closely intertwined. For example, the prime minister of the state of Lower Saxony is automatically on the supervisory board of Volkswagen (VW), as the state owns a 20% stake in the company, and just this year, a diplomat who was on special leave for 10 years during which he was the chief lobbyist of VW, was allowed to become the German ambassador to Ethiopia. The influence of the car manufacturer lobby on German climate legislation and traffic policy is such a well-documented phenomenon, that a German satirist even made a (very catchy) song about it.

That (most) German motorways famously have no maximum speed limit is perhaps the best illustration of the privileged position cars enjoy Germany’s transport policy. Even though the majority of Germans are in favour of such a limit, the topic remains so controversial that the current left-leaning national government does not intend to introduce a maximum speed limit.

But to just blame the car lobby for the current situation would be too simple. Germans have become accustomed and attached to their cars, from which a broad political consensus crystallised which does not want to seriously tackle car related issues. The biggest offenders are the previously mentioned CDU and the liberal FDP. A member of parliament of the latter party recently tweeted that “motorways are freedom cast in concrete”. However, it is not just a right/left, conservative/progressive divide. In the state capital of Hannover, the SPD pulled out of the local coalition they were in with the Green Party because they were against the Green’s plan to reduce the number of cars driving through the centre, and pedestrianise more shopping streets. The SPD accused the Greens of “ideological stubbornness” in their traffic policy.

This is the general trend in German traffic politics. Measures which aim to distribute public space more evenly amongst the different modes of transport, are dismissed as “ideological”, completely ignoring the fact that the current distribution of public space also has an ideological foundation, a car-centric one, even though a majority of households in large cities do not own a car. Rather than looking at the transportation demands of people, which can be fulfilled in a wide range of ways, the debate has become focussed on transportation means, and some enjoy a massive preference over others when it comes to policy making.

This way of approaching traffic politics stand in stark contrast with other European cities, such as Utrecht, Copenhagen, and more recently Paris, which increased ridership drastically in the last couple years through massively expanding their dedicated cycling infrastructure. These cities all realised that prioritising the car in inner city transport is unsustainable and unhealthy for its citizens.

But there is a (bike) light at the end of the tunnel. A recent traffic law reform gives municipalities more freedom to design streets how they want. Where before the “flow of (motor) traffic” was prioritised above all else, now local councils will be able to reduce car speeds and build cycling lanes, without fearing they will be sued by car drivers who argue they are obstructing that flow. It is now up to the local authorities to take the future of the streets into their own hands.

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