New bike highways to save time and energy

 

Bettina Cibulski cycles to work. Every single day. "Five kilometers - it's a simple ride, but I'd still take the bike even if it was a longer," she says. Cibulski is spokeswoman for the German national cycling club ADFC – but she is in a minority. Only one in ten Germans actually take the bike to work rather than a car or public transport.
But the ADFC is determined to change that. A new study commissioned by the German Transport Ministry found that if half of commutes under five kilometers were completed by bicycle instead of car, almost six million tons of carbon dioxide emissions could be saved every year - four percent of all the emissions caused by everyday traffic.
Two-lane bike highway
The survey also found that cyclists are often faster to work than motorists. While cars get stuck in traffic, bicycles can wind their way between the cars. Some cyclists, like Cibulski, are lucky enough to have a proper bicycle path for their commute. "Here in my town of Bremen, we have many people who take the bike to work, so politicians have responded by creating a good network of cycle paths," she said.
The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) now wants to go one step further and create bicycle highways to take pressure off the roads. Germany's first bike highway is to stretch a total of 85 kilometers right through the centers of cities including Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and Dortmund. Authorities also want to improve the network of cycle paths in other large cities like Cologne and Düsseldorf.