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Transportation

Berlin's Popular Shopping Streets Will Go Car-Free (citylab.com) 160

Posted by BeauHD from the future-plans dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CityLab: Berlin is finally getting a fuller taste of the car-free trend that's taking hold in other European cities. This summer, the German capital has announced plans to pedestrianize some vital central streets starting in October. One experiment will ban cars from the main section of Friedrichstrasse, a long, store-filled thoroughfare that, before World War II, was considered the city's main shopping street. Another will test daily closures on Tauentzienstrasse, another key retail street, with a view toward going permanently car-free in 2020.

Since reunification, Friedrichstrasse has almost regained its pre-war reputation as a primary shopping destination, and it's worth watching to see if that actually happens when its department stores and boutiques are accessible only by foot, bike and public transit. Tauentzienstrasse, meanwhile, is one of western Berlin's main competitors to Friedrichstrasse -- a broad boulevard that's home to continental Europe's largest department store. At Tauentzienstrasse, the street is wide enough for a more radical makeover. If it's fully closed for good, it could accommodate cafes and what Germans call "lying meadows" -- lawns intended for lounging and sunbathing -- in its median. Such changes probably make as much sense commercially as they do environmentally. While some stores may worry that restricted vehicle access could deter shoppers, in the age of online shopping, it pays to make the location of your store pleasant enough to lure people who simply want to hang out. There are efforts to go even further by banning cars in inner Berlin by 2030, after an interim congestion charge.

CityLab also notes that this Saturday a group of activists who favor a city-wide car ban "are planning a demonstration intended to temporarily shut down Western Berlin's Sonnenallee, a long avenue bisecting the fast-gentrifying working-class district of Neukolln." The demonstration is hoping to pressure policymakers to free the space from private cars, as traffic can be deafeningly loud.
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Berlin's Popular Shopping Streets Will Go Car-Free More

Berlin's Popular Shopping Streets Will Go Car-Free

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  • ... aren't that big a deal. Amsterdam has a nice pedestrian-only shopping street. You can still park a block or two away if you've got purchases to carry.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      I talked to a German guy a few weeks ago about this, and he was terrified that a terrorist was going to drive a car into a crowd again in Berlin. Having pedestrian-only streets will help people feel more safe and secure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by k2r ( 255754 )

        That hard to believe. Berlin is just a few hours from where I live, I’m there often for business and leisure and I have yet to meet a person being terrified that someone would drive a car into a crowd.
        That would be no Berlin reaction.

        I can imagine that someone in the Black Forest or Thüringen has those fears, though, but those are the people who vote for Nazis in an area without any immigrants.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        As Bruce Schneier has long said, "terrorists don't hate airplanes". They don't hate shopping crowds either. They just do whatever's easiest to make a splash, and no matter what you do, there will always be something easiest.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by henni16 ( 586412 )
        Take it from a "jelly donut":
        That terrified guy (or your conclusion about feelings of safety) sound rather far from reality.
        As far as actual safety is concerned, I suspect it's probably the opposite:
        Just because (most) cars aren't allowed somewhere at some times of the day, doesn't mean that it's impossible to go there by car (for example, shopping street means delivery vans will need access).
        From a driving-a-car-into-a-crowd point of view, this sounds more like creating another worthwhile target unless

    • Re:Single streets (Score:5, Informative)

      by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 ) <angelo.schneider ... e ['oom' in gap]> on Friday August 09, 2019 @12:45AM (#59066820) Journal

      Most german cities have pedestrian only zones.
      Berlin has plenty, too.
      They are just adding another one.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I think we should close all city streets and turn the parkways into actual parkways. The only place left to drive will be driveways. Next up will be separating apartments.

        • And the thoroughfairs will be fairgrounds, and the freeways slavery free grounds, and all highways will be mountains (or small hillocks).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            Nah, freeways are the opposite of toll roads, and highways are roads built up to be straight and level. All these words originally meant what they say, you know. Just as most English words are spelled exactly as they sound (when they entered the language),

      • Vienna and Bratislava also have nice pedestrian only areas.

        • Re:Single streets (Score:5, Interesting)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday August 09, 2019 @03:51AM (#59067252)

          Vienna and Bratislava also have nice pedestrian only areas.

          Most European cities have, but it's quite interesting to point out Vienna. There was a massive uproar a few years back when they declared Mariahilferstrasse a pedestrian zone. People acted as if the world was going to end. Shops lobbied against it saying that people will no longer visit the street and everyone will go bust.

          The reality was the exact opposite. There's more patronage in that street now than there ever was and that is helped a good deal by the fact the street (quite a long one) has 2 metro stops allowing people to easily access it.

          • Exactly. It is far more pleasant to have stroll through a city center when there are no cars blocking half the sidewalk and the sidewalks themselves aren't as crowded.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Chicago had the reverse experience. The main shopping street (State Street) was turned into a pedestrian mall and it essentially destroyed the city center. State Street wasn't an important traffic route (Michigan Avenue is a far larger and more important north/south street and only a few blocks away) but something about the lack of traffic made the area feel like a bad suburban mall rather than a vital part of the city. The major retail outlets eventually failed (part of this was due to larger trends in ret

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jbengt ( 874751 )
              IMHO, the reason the "State Street Pedestrian Mall" failed is because they included a narrower street and allowed emergency vehicles (reasonable) and buses (totally unreasonable) to continue driving through. That made it not a pleasant experience for pedestrians.

    • Single streets aren't a big deal once the change has been made and people are used to it. Single streets are a big deal when a change is being proposed.

      Only good things will ultimately come of it, but there will be quite a bit of disruption in the process.

  • it's about effecting time. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Friday August 09, 2019 @12:56AM (#59066838)

    Germans ate about as crazy about their cars as USians about their guns. Decisions like these take eons.

    Unlike USians we do have strict license requirements. That's why we can go without speed limit on 60% of the autobahn and still have measurably less death in traffic than in the USA.

    However, congestion is insane in some places such as the cities. Germans spend 4.7 billion man hours in traffic jams per year.

    This Berlin decision is long overdue.

    My 2 eurocents.

    • I love driving on the Autobahn. Not because of the lack of a speed limit, but because most Germans seem to be decent, considerate and competent drivers, and driving there is a relaxing experience. For those who think German drivers are nothing of the kind: come on down to the Netherlands for a day to compare...

      • I love driving on the Autobahn. Not because of the lack of a speed limit, but because most Germans seem to be decent, considerate and competent drivers, and driving there is a relaxing experience. For those who think German drivers are nothing of the kind: come on down to the Netherlands for a day to compare...

        My weekly commute takes me between the Netherlands and Germany. To be honest there's not much difference other than Germans get out of the way earlier due to a fear of being rear ended. In both cases the typical driver is courteous to get out of the lane while at the same time being a raging tailgating arsehole if they themselves are blocked by someone in front of them. Though the Dutch are far more likely to cut you off.

        To be honest though I find highway driving more relaxing in the Netherlands compared to

    • Fewer.

    • Germans ate about as crazy about their cars as USians about their guns.

      Errr no they really aren't. Germans are crazy for german cars and fast cars should they find the need to own a car, but in major cities there's no larger car ownership rate than any other non German city (a few special cases such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen excepted off course.

      Car sharing companies are big in Germany and many cities have excellent cycling / public transport infrastructure making owning a car superfluous.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Car sharing companies are big in Germany and many cities have excellent cycling / public transport infrastructure making owning a car superfluous.

        And it's considered normal, which is why those who drive in Europe tend to be those that want to drive, and not need to drive.

        In the US, driving is mandatory pretty much. You can't really get anywhere far otherwise. So you have a population forced to do something they don't really want to do, hence all the distracted driving.

        In Europe, if you don't want to drive,

  • This is cool. But not a new idea even for Berlin. Potsdamer Platz and Alexander Platz are largely pedestrianised.

    I'm actually surprised Berlin was such a car city, at least the Western side. The city has a good public transport system that makes local driving less of a necessity, and I'd have expected the bureaucratic annoyance of driving through East Germany to get to the rest of West Germany would have made cars less useful.

    • I'm actually surprised Berlin was such a car city, at least the Western side.

      There were Americans involved in the post-war reconstruction planning. They couldn't conceive of a city not dominated by the car and got their way, to a degree.

  • Once they are done... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Once they are done banning cars from cities because of the environment, most cars will be electric, and all that is gone is your right for personal transportation.

    They say it's for the environment, but then all you have to do is wait for electric cars to take over.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Cars cause a lot more problems for cities than pollution.

      Personally, I'd love to live in a city with great public transport and reasonably priced parking garages on the outskirts for personal vehicles used for road trips.

  • Closing a few streets is about reducing NO pollution, and seems worthwhile, but it will have zero effect of global warming. Pollution is worst in stop-go city driving; it would be much better with in-city autobahns/motorways/freeways (which also reduce greenhouse gas emissions because driving at constant speed needs much less fuel than accelerating), but nobody's going to build them now.

    The trouble is we're getting the opposite of sense - imposing slower speeds, such as 20mph in towns. Eventually, we'll b

    • No, this is wrong. Putting in lots of in-city freeways means that cars travel faster. So, they produce more pollution (because cars make more pollution as they get faster) and there will be more cars travelling. It's called induced demand or "build it and they will come".

      There are solutions -- make cities friendly to forms of transport that take less space and produce less pollution than cars with one person in them. That's pretty much every other form of transport, actually.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by malkavian ( 9512 )

        Incorrect. Cars make more pollution the slower they move, in urban areas. That little thing known as "gears".
        If you're moving at 20mph, you're likely using second gear (out of a likely 5). Given the rate of fuel travelling through the engine, you're probably burning as much fuel to go 20 as you would to go 50 (or more).
        The optimum for fuel efficiency is to have cars traveling at a higher gear ratio while eliminating stop and start (obstacles in the road, traffic light stops) where feasible. When this ha

  • Self destruct... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <.moc.eeznerif.todhsals. .ta. .treb.> on Friday August 09, 2019 @04:20AM (#59067332) Homepage

    There has been a big shift away from city center retail, and towards out of town big box stores and malls... Why? because these big stores are easily accessible by road, have plenty of parking and are open at times when the potential customer base aren't at work themselves.

    And retailers are encouraging it, offering volume based discounts - buy one get one free etc, all of this encourages customers to go shopping by car so they can carry the large quantities home easily.

    Meanwhile city centers become difficult to access by car and expensive to park.

  • Sense (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Such changes probably make as much sense commercially as they do environmentally

    That is, none at all.

  • They are obviously talking about building coffee shops, planting lawns and such on those closed streets, so it's not like those will just disappear at night for trucks with inventory, and of course they will not be bringing inventory on foot, so maybe it will be stores for online orders only, you go to the store, you order online at a terminal. It would help with carrying the stuff home - many wouldn't be too keen to have to carry large items (or large amount of small items) home via public transit.

  • How are they to get there? Are the trailers going to park a block or two away and hand-truck everything to the shops?

    • It's easy enough. You allow delivery vehicles in at defined times during the day, normally early.

  • While some stores may worry that restricted vehicle access could deter shoppers

    I've never been to Germany, but I still have to think that the nature of the street in front of the store has nothing to do with vehicle access.

  • What is a 'shopping street'?

  • there have been some cities that turned the core city car free.
    what i have seen is that carrier bike usage increases a lot, the biggest of these can haul a lot of stuff or a single big item easily (most of the time they are equiped with an electric motor to aid cycling when loaded).
    the problem is that these bikes are big and once outside the city core the bicycle infrastucture is no longer up to the task of handling these big bikes.

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