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.

Munich Bicycle Planner Interview

The building that houses the Bicycle Planning Offices in Munich.

We met early Monday morning with a bicycle transportation planner for the City of Munich who was incredibly helpful. She spoke fairly good English, and between that and our German we were able to communicate freely for more than an hour and a half. This is a combination of our notes and the information we got from her.

She has had some experience leading bicycle tours around the city, and felt that our proposed tour of 20 cyclists was a little ambitious. We agreed that the better plan would be to divide the group and take groups of ten or so that would be more successful staying together through busy intersections and short traffic signals.

One of the sites she visited with clients on a previous tour during the Velocity 2007 conference in Munich was a new housing development called Teresienhoehe, which sits to the West of the old city on the site of an old trade fair.

We asked her about construction projects we had seen out of the windows of the train on our way back and forth from Petershausen that appeared to be shut down. There were several large buildings that were recently completed or nearly finished that stood empty, with maybe one or two workers on the entire site. We wondered if the economic crisis was hampering the projects, but the projects have actually been very successful. They started putting in apartments and other housing there first, and are now building office buildings as well. She said the buildings are only empty because they are still very new.

Covered bike parking at a train station outside Munich.

There is an off-street bike road being put in between the Munich Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station) and Pasing, a train station and city district on the West end of the city, where much of the construction was happening. This would enable people living in the newly built apartments to commute easily by bike into the city center for work or play.

In 2002, 10% of all trips in the city of Munich were taken on bicycles. By 2008, that had increased to 14%. Their current goal for 2015 is 17%, a conservative number they may have already reached.

Blumenstrasse in Munich.

She mentioned the intersection at Sendlinger Tor as one of the problematic areas in the city. It is very crowded, with high volumes of streetcar, car, bike, and pedestrian traffic. On Blumenstrasse, a street branching off from that intersection, they have taken space from cars to provide bike routes. Until this year, taking lanes from cars was only allowed if analysis showed would not impede vehicle traffic in any way. The street had to be able to carry the same traffic volume at the same speed, or the redesign would not go through. Over the last 30 years, the bicycle advocates have worked to stay within these guidelines and have now exhausted all the streets where this is possible.

A new policy in place this year in June is more lenient on the bicycle planners taking space from automobiles. They're piloting their new program by targeting four streets near the city center:

-Lindwurmstrasse, which currently has very narrow bike paths on the sidewalks, will have bike lanes added to the street.
-Briennerstrasse, Rosenheimerstrasse, and Kapuzinerstrasse will be redesigned to connect existing fragments of bike lanes along the streets.

The city council is supporting this plan, and has asked the bicycle transportation department to design the streets and show what space they will be taking from cars, whether it is driving lanes or parking spaces.

Removing parking spaces within the city becomes an issue because parking is already so limited. Most of the pre-WWII housing units have no on site parking. It wasn't required until 1939 when Adolf Hitler decreed that all new houses must be built with garages. The narrow streets in the old city also make street parking difficult. These factors make it politically difficult to take space from cars to add bike lanes, just like in America. In Germany, public opinion seems to be that it is the City's responsibility to provide space for people to park their cars, not a personal problem they should solve themselves.

The public transportation department is also very politically powerful in Munich, which is reputed to have the best transit system in Germany. This means space cannot be taken from transit routes to provide bicycle infrastructure, sometimes including car lanes that are used by city buses.

Bikes chained to a fence on the side of a bike road.

We noticed on our rides over the weekend that there was little organized bike parking. Riders seemed to just chain their bicycles to each other or any immovable thing they could get a lock around. This created problems when paths or sidewalks were severely constricted by bikes stacked three deep on either side. A survey was taken in 2003 to assess problem points throughout the city, and proposals are being made now to resolve those areas. New parking racks or structures for a total of 1,000 bikes are expected to be completed by the end of this year. A major hiccup in this process has been advocates for preserving the historic appearance of the city who don't want bike racks or structures marring the streetscape. They take no issue with the automobiles that are far more obtrusive, because (and this is exactly what the planner told us) "theoretically, the cars can all still be removed." Yeah, right. So on the day they decide they need all the cars out of Munich, we can solicit volunteers to go around with wrenches and pack up the racks.

When we asked if there was a bike collective in Munich similar to our "Bike Church" in Davis, we didn't get far. She mentioned a club called ADFC that is for all of Germany, but they seem more like Davis Bicycles! and organize tours, repair bikes, and work politely on policy issues. The local leader of the group is diplomatic and has been working closely with City departments for the last 20 years, but members can apparently be contrary and critical at times, badmouthing City staff for not making faster progress on the streets. Again, this is a dynamic familiar to bicycle professionals in the States, who are often strong advocates on a personal level, but must restrain themselves to be able to work within the system that employs them.

The Green Party in Munich is rising in influence, currently holding eleven seats on the 80-member City Council. Two of those eleven are Green Party traffic planners, which is a great advantage for bicycle advancement. The Deputy Mayor is also a huge advocate for bicycling.

Red painted bike lane across a busy intersection in Munich.

Munich has colored bike lanes in cluttered or busy intersections that highlight the bike lane conflict areas in red. Our friend Bernhard mentioned to us that the paint gets slippery when it rains, but the planner we spoke with had never heard of any complaints. She mentioned that the high volume of vehicle traffic over the paint means they have to redo it every few years, which is costly.

Bicycle marking in a highlighted bike lane.

When we asked about a helmet law, she confirmed our conclusion that none exists. Instead, the goal of the department is to get people riding and create infrastructure that is safe enough that helmets are not needed. She felt a helmet law would give the impression that cycling is dangerous, which is exactly what they are working to avoid. Increased ridership will increase the visibility of cyclists and cause drivers to pay better attention to them.

The work being done to improve bicycle routes is part of a bigger Transportation Development Plan that bicycle traffic fits into. The broad plan is working to create green development within the city. There is a separate Klima plan (our equivalent of a Climate-Action Plan), but there are no specific bicycle objectives under that plan. The Klima plan does, however, support Munich's bicycle traffic planning efforts.

A bicycle/"M" design in the street next to Marienplatz in Munich.