62-Mile Bicycle Highway That’s Completely Car Free
In January, Germany opened the first three-mile stretch of a bicycle highway or “bike autobahn” that will eventually, “span over 62 miles, connecting 10 western cities including Duisburg, Bochum, and Hamm, as well as four universities.” And it’s entirely car-free.
Much like a traditional highway, bike highway (my term) has passing lanes, overpasses and underpasses for crossroads, and even streetlights. The tracks are 13 feet wide too, which allows for passing. A recent study completed by development group RVR, projects it to take 50,000 cars off the road each day. As cycle infrastructures like this are increasingly being constructed in Northern Europe’s cities, these highways could one day cover the whole country, forming an alternative national network- “Shall we bike to Spain this week, darling?” Ok, yes, that’s a stretch but this is amazing.
The full cost of the new highway will be 180 million Euros. While all of its funding is not yet in place, it will ultimately come from a blend of municipal and provincial budgets. And though not everyone is convinced of the benefits of this project, a Berlin bike autobahn plan- linking the city center with the southwest area- is also facing resistance, many see that this idea has real potential.
The idea nonetheless has real potential for medium-length journeys, pushing the limits of frequent daily bike use out from the (now well-provided-for) inner city into the suburbs and wider regions. Munich isalready planning a network like this one, which will stretch from the historic center out along 14 protected two-lane paths through the suburbs into the surrounding lake land. Germany’s fourth city, Cologne, has a smaller plan for a similar bike highway out into its western exurbs.
When it comes to extending this idea from metro areas to tracks between cities, the new Hamm-Duisburg route is ideal. It will pass through the most densely populated region of Germany, the Ruhr region, where a network of industrial cities lies scattered at only short distances from each other, interspersed with forest and farmland. When complete, the route will bring a string of cities into 30 minutes cycle distance of each other—almost 2 million people will live within a two-kilometer radius of the completed highway.
In such a thickly populated, polycentric urban area, the highway could easily become a viable commuter link, freeing up capacity on already busy roads and railways. Indeed, the link’s proposers predict (perhaps optimistically?) that the completed link would take 50,000 cars off the road daily.
Source: Sunny Skyz and City Lab
