Munich Bikeway Engineer Interview

Monday, August 23, 2010, 10:30 am

This was an information-packed but delightful time with a lead engineer in the bikeway system what we would call the public works department in Munich. He was informative, full of technical details, and concise. We collected a number of documents from him, some in English, and the rest needing only a bit of translation to pull out statistics. We also got links to online material, and a good contact in Copenhagen, Denmark, for future use.

Some basic facts to start with:

• 1,400 km of bikeways are planned in Munich.
• 1,200 km of that system is already in place.
• The last 200 km are in the planning and engineering stages.
• 85% of the streets in the city are limited to 30 km per hour speeds (19 MPH).
• On main routes, the focus is on getting separate bike lanes or paths instead of sharing space with cars.
• The quiet residential streets are considered to be the “muscles” of the bikeway system.
• The travel concept is to show route options off the busy major streets.

And some definitions and terminology for Munich:

• Bike lanes are painted on the street, as in the States.
• Bike paths are on the sidewalks in the street right-of-way.
• Bike roads are separated facilities, what we would call bike paths in the States.

Bike paths on the sidewalks have been built for the past 80 years, but cyclists have been moved into the street space in bike lanes for only the last 10 or 15 years. There is an understandable split opinion about which approach is better. Residents usually want bike paths on the sidewalks, as they feel safer on them. Engineers see the accident data, hampered visibility, and increased conflict points that bike paths bring and come down in favor of keeping bike traffic in structured and visible spaces on the street. Cyclists in bike lanes are more visible to drivers as they approach intersections. In fact, one bike path was removed entirely because of hazardous situations.

Where residents prefer bike paths but the engineers see potential problems, they may bring the bike path right to the curb adjacent to the street near the intersections. This increases the visibility of the cyclists without putting them in the street.

Counterflow riding is reduced with bike lanes in the street, because cyclists riding against oncoming traffic are forced into the vehicle lane to pass an oncoming cyclist, making them uncomfortable. Even with major efforts to improve connectivity, not all cyclists follow the routes provided for them. The whole bikeway network was redone at the Sendlingertor Platz just south of the old city recently. This is a very busy location with several secondary streets feeding into the primary 4-way intersection and big volumes of pedestrian, bicycle, bus, streetcar, and vehicle traffic. Even with the careful redesigning of the bikeway routes at Sendlingertor, including directional signs and colored asphalt in conflict areas, 10% of the cyclists in the bike lanes are riding against the flow of bike traffic.

This counterflow rider issue contributes to the bicycle accident problem citywide, and is getting more attention from city officials. Cyclists and right-turning vehicle accidents compose another big percentage of all bicycle accidents.

Counterflow bike traffic is designed into many one-way vehicle streets, especially in quiet residential areas. These streets usually get painted stripes and bicycle markings for the counterflow bike traffic. Bikes going in the direction of the vehicle flow are mixed into traffic, which is reasonable in slow speed areas. The bike lanes that are in many of these quiet residential streets are marked with dashed lines which indicates it is clearly reserved for the bikes. This means that vehicles may normally use that portion of the street, but must yield that space to a cyclist if one appears.

One additional complication is the requirement for “back side” traffic lights when counter flow bike traffic is on one-way streets that have lights for vehicles. But our observation after riding bikes on counterflow lanes is that no other bikeway feature improves connectivity so much. We talk about tipping the balance towards bikes, so opening hundreds of direct short cuts to cyclists while drivers circle the blocks makes a huge difference. More on this feature in other cities will follow.

One downside of all bike lanes is that many drivers view them as a convenient parking and loading zone, indifferent to the burden this places on cyclists who must then go around in traffic. An earlier post has our observations about an empty car blocking the bike lane so the driver could run into a nearby Starbucks.

A vehicle capacity analysis is often required for a solution that has the potential to impede traffic flow.

There are technical guidelines for street and bikeway features, similar to our MUTCD. And like our manual, the review and approval process for new devices and techniques can be years long. Still, there is a bit of informal experimentation going on, with less concern about liability than we seem to have in the States. As a result, they have introduced bike boxes to Munich.

There are cross sections with dimensions for urban streets in the manuals, but they offer little guidance for bikeway engineering.

Standards:

The standard width for bike lanes is 1.85 meters plus a 0.5 meter buffer next to parked cars. A 0.75 meter buffer is preferred.

There are two types of bicycle lanes: The normal lane is marked with a solid line which vehicles are not to cross. The “protected” lane is marked with a dashed line, indicating vehicles may cross into the bike lane but not when cyclists are present. Protected lanes may only be 1.25 to 1.5 meters wide, which is too narrow IF drivers leave only this little space on the street for cyclists. They are used when the street is under 7.5 meters in width.

A one-meter wide bike space marked only by a single dashed line is allowed near intersections, but the engineer we apoke with does not like this minimalist approach.

The preferred width for bike paths is 2.0 meters, with a minimum standard of 1.60 meters. These get a 0.50 meter buffer to vehicle traffic and a 0.75 buffer to parked cars. Care is taken to be sure a bike path does not deprive pedestrians of necessary sidewalk space. The national manuals have no specific standard for pedestrian travel width, just “enough” (literally). In Munich, engineers work towards a desired width of 4 meters, with a 2.5 meter minimum. He reported that 2.5 to 3 meters is common in Copenhagen.

There is also a 6 to 8 centimeter curb between pedestrians and cyclists in Copenhagen, which can trip pedestrians. In Munich a lower 1.5 cm bump is used. This allows handicapped people to use the curb as a guide to navigate, but can be a hazard for cyclists with wet fall leaves or a thin layer of snow on the ground.

The standard for parking aisles is 2 meters wide, considerably narrower than what we see in most cities in the States, including Davis. (Sacramento has quite a few streets marked with 7-foot parking aisles, just a bit wider than the Munich standard.)

The bottom line with the bikeway planners and engineers in Munich is that the purpose of the system they plan, build, and manage is to promote cycling. (I assume this was meant to imply that strict adherence to the standards and guidelines might have to step aside at times to advance this goal.)

Another approach to make cycling more appealing is to establish bike routes that are on quieter streets but run more or less parallel to busy streets. This is an ongoing project.

Link to additional resources coming soon.